Nexus S support in Replicant being worked on

[Michael von Glasow]

On 08/14/2011 05:19 PM, PaulK wrote:
> The next important steps in the Nexus S support are the following (in no
> particular order):
>
> * replace the last replaceable non-free bits (GPS and compass for
> instance)

About the GPS: a while back I had the idea of porting the gpsd library 
(the one which gpsd itself uses to talk to the GPS units) to Android – 
the API is functionally quite similar to Android's, so all it would take 
is a "translation" layer. Also, this solution would be portable to most 
GPSes out there in the market and thus to future projects.

I have tried this a while back, but couldn't get gpsd to compile on 
bionic – it relies on some glibc functions that are not available on 
bionic or need to be substituted, so some gpsd hacking or a glibc 
compatibility library on top of bionic would be required.

Honestly, though, I might not get around to doing that in the near 
future – but maybe someone is interested in picking this up. Experience 
in porting Linux libraries to Android would help (which is a handicap 
from me as I'm starting from scratch). I'll be available for advice if 
needed – I have done some GPS-related coding (Navit, Android on Freerunner).

Michael