SailfishOS/Jolla book for developers

asked 2015-12-04 06:57:29 +0200

Joerg
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updated 2015-12-05 13:10:58 +0200

Is there any good book, that introduces a new developer to the SalifishOS / Jolla development?

I'm talking about a book for people that are new to the platform, not to programming.

Something in the style of:

There are a lot of moving parts that have to work together, if you want to program:

a decent applications, that e.g. uses:
- sensors
- messages
- access the underlying system
- etc.
services
build a TOH

I'm a seasoned developer. And I find it hard to collect all the pieces.

IMHO a good book could attract a lot more developers to the system.

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19

answered 2015-12-04 12:15:13 +0200

Amilcar Santos
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Something like this? http://hardcodes.de/SailfishOS/Developing-with-SailfishOS.pdf

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Thanks! Got to have a look at it!

lakutalo ( 2015-12-04 13:17:51 +0200 )edit

Unfortunately there are alot of TODO's in some chapters.. :(
here's the source(?): https://github.com/hardcodes/developwithsailfishos

Amilcar Santos ( 2015-12-04 14:22:39 +0200 )edit

Exactly! I read Sven's paper and I highly recommend it to any beginner to learn how to work with the SDK tools. As @Amilcar Santos pointed out, the programming chapters are still ToDo (at least in the Jan 2015 version, I could find). As far as I know the sources are on GitHub. It might make a good start for a project. Anyone? :-)

Joerg ( 2015-12-04 16:15:37 +0200 )edit

10

answered 2015-12-04 12:20:43 +0200

utkiek
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Because Sailfish comes with QT you have a change for mostly platform independent programming. If you a C++ programmer your first job is learning QML. A good source is the qmlbook project. And you can learn from all the examples in the qml of the apps on your Jolla. Or search on github.

Maybe look in the Mer project can satisfy your curiosity.

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1

qmlbook project look great!, thanks! :)

Spam Hunter ( 2015-12-04 12:24:21 +0200 )edit

Thank you @utkiek! I had a quick look at the qmlbook page and it indeed looks very promising.

I also know about the tutorials for the SailfishOS UI, that come with the SDK.

But this is exactly my point: It seems there are bits and pieces everywhere. You have to know where to look for them and how to put them into the right order. Most of them also seems to be only "kind of" right for the platform.

Unfortunately this is an extra hurdle for new developers that want to get started with a project on SailfishOS/Jolla. While this is ok for a "geek system", I wonder what impact this has on the number of good quality native applications that are developed for the OS.

Joerg ( 2015-12-04 16:43:14 +0200 )edit

@Jörg: First programming in a new environment is hard. This is my experience in all 18 (or more) environments I had worked. It's normal, it's ok. There is no easy way. Reading a book can be only a motivation for your first steps. Then follows the daily hard work. If you live in northern germany maybe we can go your first steps together.

utkiek ( 2015-12-04 17:14:18 +0200 )edit

1

@utkiek I agree, it is my experience too. But I always found, that after a didactically good introduction things are going much smoother, especially if you are already an experienced programmer. Of course, that might be just me.

Thank you for your kind offer to help me with getting started. While I'm from Berlin, these days I spend most of my time in South East Asia. But I will come back to the development mail group, this forum and maybe even you personally, to shamelessly profit from all of you guys experience whenever I ran into a problem in my project.

I wonder tough if not Jolla or the SailfishOS platform in general would greatly profit form a dedicated resource for beginners.

Joerg ( 2015-12-05 05:28:24 +0200 )edit

5

answered 2015-12-04 09:25:57 +0200

lakutalo

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updated 2016-05-10 15:58:24 +0200

Hello Joerg, I know you asked about a book, but as a first place to go for a developer resource I recommend the SailfishOS site: https://sailfishos.org/wiki/SailfishOS
[EDIT - new link]: The refurbished site now contains a whole lot more of great information.

IMO it contains already much of what you were asking for, especially the SailfishOS specifics.

For many open tools or modules I have to agree that there is not much structured documentation available but the pieces to collect here and partly at talk.maemo.org.

Also here is a post that might lead you to some other posts that themselves would lead you to...

Hopefully we can gather some attention here. It would be great if Jolla could be unlike, also in this respect, namely to make it super easy for developer newcomers to kick off (in contrast to other phone OS's). It would be another asset for Jolla, a unique selling point.

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1

@lakutalo: Thank you for you answer! These are great resources. But as you say, they lack structure. IMO this gives a newcomer the feeling, that you have to know everything, before you can do anything. I'm sure this is as little true, as it is for iOS, Windows, Android, etc. But without good teaching material to guide you, it appears quite a big wall to climb.

Joerg ( 2015-12-04 09:53:18 +0200 )edit

As much as I like books, I have to admit that I have always been too impatient for reading them to get started. What I like most is a working set of examples to download and deploy for the first deep dive and of course instructions on how to get everything running. I guess there weren't too much resources left to accomplish all the documentation tasks at Jolla's either, so TJC is of invaluable help. Let's keep our fingers crossed they get it all sorted out for now.

lakutalo ( 2015-12-06 19:38:48 +0200 )edit

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answered 2015-12-06 11:32:34 +0200