[pkg-fso-maint] Announcing omhacks and pm-utils-light

[Enrico Zini]

Hello,

I just uploaded this to pkg-fso:

  http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-fso/omhacks.git;a=blob;f=README

It contains several things:

 1. libomhacks, which is a simple C library of useful functions to
    fiddle with the FreeRunner
 2. om, a command line front-end to libomhacks:
    # om --help
    Usage: om help
    Usage: om sysfs name [name...]
    Usage: om backlight
    Usage: om backlight <brightness>
    Usage: om touchscreen lock
    Usage: om resume-reason
    Usage: om led <name>
    Usage: om led <name> <brightness>
    Usage: om led <name> <brightness> timer <ontime> <offtime>
    Options:
      --help: print this help message
      --swap: set new value and print old value
 3. pm-utils-light, a lightweight replacement for pm-suspend
    (see this thread: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pm-utils/2009-November/002029.html)
 4. some hooks for pm-utils-light that:
     - turn on the blue power light when suspend scripts are running
     - cancel resume and suspend again if the resume reason was "usb
       disconnect"
     - turn off backlight and lock the screen when suspending (to avoid
       flickers and unwanted touchscreen events if resume is canceled
       and it's going back to sleep)


*The plan for pm-utils-light*

An important word about pm-utils-light: it makes it feasible to suspend
the phone using the command "pm-suspend", just like in any normal Debian
system. We now have all the benefits of pm-suspend, on the phone.

This means that we can now package sets of suspend/resume hooks on the
phone, in a way that is nice, clean, as well defined and as well
documented as in the desktop, and also compatible with the desktop.

We now have a way of packageing phone-specific suspend/resume hooks.

We also now have a way to create software (I think of Zavai, for
example) that targets both the phone and the desktop, sharing as much
code and logic as possible.

So with pm-utils-light it's now possible, for example, to create a wake
up alarm utility based on rtcwake that hooks into system resume with the
same scripts in the openmoko and in my laptop.

And pm-utils-light, used properly, is extremely efficient. That means
that this bit of functionality is compatible with the desktop without
any sacrifice in terms of performance.

And finally, hooks provided by other Debian packages now can work out of
the box on the phone.


*The plan for libomhacks*

We now have a place to put hardware control functions that can be called
efficiently from compiled code without the latency of passing through
dbus, or even of context switches, and also conveniently from
shellscripts.

So if there are other people like me out there with a growing hairy
collection of little tools that are tiny wrappers around a bit of /sys
or a system call, now you know where to put your code, and how to have
it packaged.


Ciao,

Enrico

-- 
GPG key: 4096R/E7AD5568 2009-05-08 Enrico Zini <enrico at enricozini.org>
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