N9 Developer

Updated API showcase example application

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:00:40 +0300

We have published an updated version of the MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan API showcase application.

This version contains the following new features:

Internet radio (including recording of streams and featuring events feed and notification APIs).
Seven wonders of the world (featuring the use of the landmarks API)
Accelerometer / tap sensor visualizer (featuring sensor APIs)

You can get the binary from harmattan-dev, and the source code is also available.

Moving on from Harmattan PR 1.0

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:27:57 +0300

The Nokia N9 firmware upgrade rate has been rapid. Now is the time for developers to move their own application testing and verification from Harmattan PR 1.0 to Harmattan PR 1.1.

The original Harmattan software release (PR 1.0) is now in an ever-diminishing minority. Harmattan PR 1.1, the first update release (introduced on week 45) took over the installed base in less than two months. Now four weeks old Harmattan PR 1.2 release has continued in the same groove, or even faster.

Hence, we have initiated steps to change the principal test environment from Harmattan PR 1.0 to Harmattan PR 1.1 in the Nokia Store. If your application previously has been rejected on account of PR1.0-incompatibility, those issues are now automatically waived.

The SDK and corresponding sysroot in the Harmattan target is not (yet) updated from PR 1.0. In other words, you will still compile against Harmattan PR 1.0 sysroot for time being. Availability of a newer sysroot and instructions on how to take it into use will be announced at an appropriate time.

And if you have already updated your device to PR1.2, you can utilize the remote device access functionality or one of the multiple QEMU variants (now available with the update to the Harmattan target) to pre-verify your application's correct behavior.

Example application showcasing key Harmattan APIs

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:17:18 +0200

We have published a new example application for Harmattan developers.

The application's source code is available on harmattan-dev. It can be built in Qt SDK using the enclosed project-file.

The application features several key elements in the Harmattan application programming interface, and thus provides a good starting point for learning about specific technologies and application development for N9 in general.

The initial version of the showcase application concentrates on Qt Mobility interfaces (ranging from maps, multimedia and messaging to visualizing the sensor data with a compass overlaid on camera input).

In the messaging area it provides insight how NFC is easily integrated into an application.

Feedback on the application are best given as comments in this blog entry.

Developer Library latest update

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:30:46 +0200

This Developer Library and API reference update includes documentation for PR 1.2 features and documentation enhancements for existing features:

Information on the new Instrumentation Dashboard, and how to use strace, latrace, swaplogger and mem-cpu-monitor with it.
New section on Multimedia APIs which brings together the documentation of all multimedia-related functionality.
New UX related materials: Gestures, Themes, Using Bottom Toolbar, Non-visual feedback and Using Shaders.
New items on the List of path name exceptions.
New section on Integrating account management to applications.

As always, your feedback about the Developer Library is very welcome!

Developer tooling update

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:37:07 +0200

We have released updates for both software development kits.

The Harmattan target for the Qt SDK can now be updated online, using the SDK maintenance tool. The additional functionalities concern mostly improved runtimes for testing. The Qt Quick Components in the Simulator have been upgraded to the same version as is used on the device, and the Simulator now supports both landscape and portrait orientations. Also, there are now three separate QEMU images - one for PR1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 each. The full release notes are available in harmattan-dev.

The Platform SDK is no longer tagged beta, though some usability issues remain, as described in the release notes.

The API baseline remains at PR1.0 (to ensure that all users can safely obtain and use the applications), but a few additional interfaces are now available as extensions: Frankencamera is supported in all Harmattan releases, Simple NDEF Exchange Protocol is supported only in PR1.2. The development packages containing the additional interfaces are available for download.

UX documentation up to date

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:37:59 +0200

The Nokia N9 UX Guidelines site is now up to date, so go have a look. We've also improved the organisation of the site to serve UI designers and developers better. Improved linking between the UX site and the developer documentation means that it's easier to match what you want to do with how to do it.

However, the Chinese-language UX materials have not been updated at this point. If you are using them, we'd like to hear from you! Do you think it's useful having some material available in Chinese? Should there be more? Less? Different materials?

Harmattan Bugzilla Closed for New Bugs

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:54:15 +0200

In November 2011, we opened a public Bugzilla to interact with the N9 user community and receive end user bug reports and enhancement requests. To this date, we have received over 1100 bug reports. We thank you for the active contribution.

At this point of the product lifecycle, we have identified the major issues to be addressed in the upcoming software updates beyond the PR1.2 release. While we will continue to address issues already reported, we are unable to accept any new requests in Bugzilla.

The Harmattan Bugzilla will remain as read only for some time. However, we will continue to process the bug reports already in Bugzilla.

We kindly request you to continue further Harmattan developer discussions, bugs and other topics under developer.nokia.com. We hope to receive your continued support and help us further improve the quality of N9 software.

PySide Becomes a Qt Add-on

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:30:24 +0200

PySide, the Python Qt binding framework used prominently in MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan, has now finished migration from its previous standalone setup to Qt Project infrastructure.

Being a Qt Add-on provides PySide a permanent home and perfect alignment with Qt Frameworks. Furthermore, the project gets improved visibility, as well as a simple, carefully thought out meritocratic project structure. In addition to the wiki that is already hosted by Qt, the PySide mailing list and the bug tracker are also now hosted by Qt. More information on the Qt Project can be found on the project web site.

The PySide project now follows Qt Project's governance model. The Maintainer for API Extractor, Generatorrunner, and Shiboken is Marcelo Lira. The Maintainer for the PySide component is Hugo Parente Lima. Paulo Alcantara is an Approver for PySide. All other project roles are informal. Srini Kommoori has kindly volunteered to be the webmaster and wikimaster for the project.

To developers using PySide the migration is mostly transparent. PySide is still available under the same licensing terms, and the project facilities are still the mostly unchanged. Instead of having a separate Bugzilla instance, the PySide project now utilizes Qt's Jira bug tracker. Also the mailing list address has changed to pyside@qt-project.org.

Qt Project uses Gerrit for code reviews. Developers contributing code to PySide should do it using Gerrit from now on. Read-only access to the git source code repositories is still provided via Gitorious.

About PySide

PySide is a Python Qt bindings project initiated by Nokia. PySide provides access to not only the complete Qt framework but also Qt Mobility, as well as to generator tools for rapidly generating Python bindings for any C++ libraries.

The PySide project is a Qt Add-on, sharing the same infrastructure and governance model as the open Qt Project itself. PySide is developed in the open, with all facilities you would expect from any modern open source project such as all code in a git repository, and an open bug tracker for reporting bugs.

Patience is a virtue while waiting for a platform update

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:15:52 +0200

Dear eager N9 developers!

We know that you are interested in updating your devices to PR1.2 as fast as possible, but we propose that you restrain yourselves to the fully productized and verified updating procedure.

The availability of the update is based on the variant of the Harmattan operating system on your device, and not the current operator or your physical location. See Harmattan version numbers explained (23-Jan-2012) for further details.

The over the air updates are rolled out on a per-variant basis. Some variants are released earlier, and others obviously later. The exact schedule depends on various aspects, including but not limited to variant volumes, time zones and e.g. network owner approval. Please have patience waiting for the update notification to appear on your device.

We recommend that you do not apply your skills or other voodoo in forcing the update from the terminal application. While manually tweaking the settings and trying to force the update may seem to work, you may also end up bricking your device or otherwise rendering the platform or applications to an unexpected state.

A variant release consists of packages that have dependencies to each other. Different variants have different packages and different dependencies. Additionally, apt-get is a component of full software delivery stack and using it directly is not advised. If a user e.g. forces an update of a variant on top of another variant by manually tweaking repository information, this may result in some packages not getting updated, and some being otherwise wrong.

To update your device, only use the over the air updates with device graphical user interface or the Nokia Software Updater.

Remember that great powers come with great responsibility: the warning of potentially losing your warranty when enabling developer mode is there for a reason. The terminal enables you to do plenty of impressive things, but it also enables you to mess up your device's configuration and contents in a spectacular fashion.

In addition, some users have experienced sluggishness on first boot after the update. That is to be expected and is a sign of ongoing cleanup and re-indexing. It should be fairly fast, only a minute or so for most users. However, the duration is dependent on the amount of data stored on the device, and thus the sequence may take significantly longer as well.

Ensuring a great application update experience

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:22:04 +0200

The upcoming MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan update (to version 1.2) features improved support for application updates.

The updated platform software will detect and announce updates to applications that are distributed through the Nokia Store.

And there was much rejoicing!

However, there are a couple of things developers need to be aware of when creating updates:

Do not change the name of the content item or the package name, as the new version will not be displayed as an update (however, it will be visible in the Ovi Store client).
Do not change the price point of the content item from free to non-free, please create a separate content item instead.

See the Nokia Publisher Guide for further details.