Status Replicant 4.0 on GTA04?

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 04.07.2013 um 14:51 schrieb Paul Kocialkowski:

> Le lundi 01 juillet 2013 à 14:37 +0200, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller a
> écrit :
>> I recently subscribed to this list because I would like to push and help
>> with Replicant 4.0 on GTA04.
> 
> That's really nice. I hope we'll be able to find a solution for the
> kernel together soon.
> 
>> Maybe someone can tell a little about the status? Or even better make
>> the installation complete - so that it becomes easier to help developing
>> and new developers can concentrate on their area of expertise (e.g. kernel).
> 
> The GTA04 repositories (device, kernel and bootloaders) have been added
> and I've just finished checking that everything builds. Obviously, it's
> far from being feature-complete.
> 
> The kernel itself comes with major issues and lack of support on many
> aspects. The status of the userspace is the following:
> * Graphics are good enough (fast compared to other devices)
> * There is no or minor (software EGL) 3D support
> * Sound is working (playback and recording)
> * Telephony is work in progress, I have started writing an AT Radio
> Interface Layer (RIL) called Hayes-RIL and it's not feature-complete yet
> and is not part of the gta04 products yet (that means it's not built)
> * There is no sound during calls, but it would be easy with hw routing
> * No WiFi support but hopefully other Android devices have the same chip
> so we could reuse code

Do we need special code for this? IMHO it is just iwconfig/ifconfig up/down stuff
and configuration. Everything else should be done by the kernel. Well, maybe
locating the binary blob needs some udev rule or a comparable mechanism.

> * No bluetooth support
> * No GPS support
> * No sensors support
> * No camera support

Camera may be difficult since the camera infrastructure in the kernel has changed
at least 3 times between 2.6 and 3.7 so that only some pieces work and rarely
everything.

> 
> Of course, that all depends on the kernel: this status list assumes the
> kernel-side of things works.
> 
> My personal roadmap for gta04 is the following:
> * Getting kernel working, with all drivers and power (suspend/resume)
> support

One question: is the kernel based on Rowboat or is it a stock kernel?
And which version is it? The console log appears to say 3.0.72.

And I wonder if we can use a recent kernel for the BeagleBoard XM
(which is quite similar in hardware). But it may have less support for
power management than anything else (because the BB only works
on an external power supply).

> * Getting telephony working (that means finishing the RIL)
> * Adding support for WiFi and bluetooth
> * Adding support for GPS and sensors
> * Adding support for camera
> 
> There are minor additional steps to get done too.

I was now successful to run my self-compiled version on a GTA04!
It is running quite well and has fancy debugging features like drawing
the touch screen trace in front of all applications. By this it is easy to
estimate the touch jitter.

I would add to the list:
* use new dejittered touch screen driver
* lighting the green LED when charging was a nice feature on 2.3
* add more display drivers for the Letux 3704 and Letux 7004 variants
* add a battery driver for L3704/L7004 which have no HDQ information

BR,
Nikolaus