From: ruby770@...
Date: 2006-02-14T02:58:26+09:00
Subject: Ruby port for Nokia 770 Wireless Internet Tablet


Greetings Fellow Ruby Enthusiasts,

I recently purchased a Nokia 770 wireless Internet Tablet
(http://europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,75023,00.html) and a few days ago I
successfully ported Ruby 1.8.4 to it.  For those of you who are
unfamiliar w/the 770, it's Nokia's first such non-phone product (or so
they claim): a very nifty hand-held "PC" that among other things runs a
pared down version of Linux (from kernel.org, debian package), has
built in wifi and bluetooth, includes email client, Opera browser, RSS
client, audio and video, all displayed on an 800x480x16bpp display.
The 770 will sense any available wifi connection and jack in
effortlessly.  And, if you have a bluetooth-ready cell phone, the 770
can jack into that too and provide an internet connection via GPRS
anywhere your cell has a signal (very cool indeed.)  Before porting
Ruby to it, it was love at first sight. Now I'm ecstatic.

Anyway, the port itself wasn't rocket science, but a bit more than
trial given the learning curve and quirks of the 770's "Maemo" cross
compiling development environment (http://maemo.org/).  At this point,
I'm calling the port an alpha because (a) its not heavily tested on the
target device (although Ruby passes its self-test in the Maemo ARM
runtime simulator), (b) because there are no Ruby extensions compiled
in yet (ext/dl.c is having problems w/the cross compiler), and (c) its
just a tar ball w/out the convenience of a Debian compatible
installable package.  If there's any significant interest in this port
of Ruby, I'd be more than happy to invest the time to clear up these
issues so we have a respectable RC.

Lastly, my question to the community is this: would such a port of Ruby
be appropriately placed in the RAA or simply distributed to interested
parties say via a wiki or my personal web site?

For those interested in the port, for the moment, you can email me at
ruby770@gmail.com and I can sent you the distribution and instructions.
 And should you have a Nokia 770 and want to run Ruby on it, here are a
few applications you'll need to download from Maemo.org and install on
your 770 to get going with Ruby
(http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalog):

Download and install: xterm, bash and vim.  You'll need an xterm in
which to run bash, from which, in turn, to install the tar ball and run
Ruby.

Kind Regards to all,

Ken Hilton

PS. At the time of this posting, it appears there has been some other
Ruby/Nokia 770 effort going on.  In this case, my "port" does not
require root access to the device which can be problematic as Nokia
does not supply the root password (although I'm told it can be
cracked.)