[Scratchbox-users] scratchbox 1 vs scratchbox 2 ... and some doc

[Lauri Leukkunen]

On Jul 20, 2008, at 23:59 PM, Ray Kiddy wrote:

>
> Having banged my head on the wall trying to get some scratchbox  
> things working, but seeing the value in doing this, I want to try  
> to help document some things and have started to do so, but a few  
> questions I have are holding me back. If anyone is willing to  
> answer them, it would be much appreciated:
>
> 1) Choose the correct phrase:
>
> Maemo is a plaform for development that is ( dependent on | related  
> to | derived from | seperate from ) the Debian tools platform.
>

I don't understand what any of those options mean ;)

> 2) Which of these is true?
>
> - Scratchbox (http://www.scratchbox.org/) is the current version  
> and should be used by most people, even though most of its  
> documentation is old.
>

Probably true, but keep in mind that "most people" shouldn't be using  
scratchbox (1 or 2) directly on their own, they should be using it  
because the distro of their choice (Maemo, some inhouse embedded  
distro) is using it. Now for some people who do "get it", it's  
actually pretty straight forward to use scratchbox with any target  
distribution, but I've totally given up hope of the average user  
figuring the things out for themselves since nobody who thinks they  
can write code bothers to read documentation, no matter how much that  
would help them.

As soon as it goes beyond "click here to install", 99% of people have  
spent their attention span.

> - Scratchbox2 (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/sbox2) is  
> the current version and should be used by most people, even though  
> it is mostly undocumented.

Scratchbox2 is the current development version, there is no 2.0  
release out yet. I hope to have it out within this decade...

> - Scratchbox2 will eventually replace Scratchbox.

Most likely, unless people have fallen in love with SB1 and don't  
want to give up their chroot jail. Stockholm syndrome. SB1 costs  
about 10x more to develop and maintain.

> - Scratchbox2 has nothing to do with Scratchbox.

Not true. SB2 will be used by Nokia to replace SB1 at some point, it  
seems to take quite long to happen though, not surprisingly.


> - The Debian tools platforms stands on its own and can be used for  
> development.

Again I don't understand what you mean with "debian tools platform".

> - Maemo is the suggested platform for development for most users.

It is the suggested platform for development for people who want to  
target Maemo.
For other distros someone needs to put together an SDK using SB (1 or  
2) and then people can use it.

> I also found this page and will link to it, since it would have  
> been amazingly helpful to find this page earlier, before having to  
> ask a bunch of dumb questions. Did everyone else just find this,  
> somehow, and it seemed not worth mentioning?
>
> 	http://www.scratchbox.org/wiki/ScratchboxInstallation
>
> It occurs to me that this page might even replace the  
> installdoc.html page and it would be editable. So it could be kept  
> up to date.

Most people who use SB (the people doing maemo work), got their  
instructions from their SDK provider (maemo.org in most cases).

The sad state of the documentation on scratchbox.org reflects this.  
As for SB2, I've not cared about documentation myself. If someone  
wants to step forward and start writing it into the fdo wiki, I'll  
promise to answer *any* question, more or less. :)

/lauri