To the people who would like to contribute to postmarketOS but haven't, what is stopping you?
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To the people who would like to contribute to postmarketOS but haven't, what is stopping you? Or, people who *have* contributed but stopped. (With the exception of just not having time or such)
I'd love to hear some feedback on how our contribution process could be streamlined.
@justsoup I had one thing that I thought could need changing, made a MR for it and it was quickly accepted.
Overall very pleasant experience, if I’d stumble upon something else that I think I could improve, I‘d definitely do it again. -
@justsoup@mstdn.social Not really about the contribution process, but about getting to the point where there is something to contribute: At least on Pinephone I can have only one installed kernel version. If I experiment on kernel code and make a serious mistake, recovery is messy (requires chroot into the pmOS rootfs to install a working kernel). That really discourages experimenting when I have limited time (which is almost always, sadly). The option to install kernels side-by-side and pick one from U-Boot would help a lot.
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@justsoup@mstdn.social tried to figure how to modify stuff built by pmbootstrap and couldn't figure out how lol
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@justsoup@mstdn.social my only modern and working android device was originally purchased with the intent of using postmarketOS (Pixel 3a) but its purpose later shifted to being a video camera, android apps, and anything i can't have/don't want on my main phone. pmOS doesn't have proper rear camera support on the 3a atm either so that's a dealbreaker
my older android devices refuse to boot pmOS when i build images (and my oldest device has had most homebrew/custom ROMs lost to time! also it's bricked)
i don't know enough about programming or reverse engineering to PR fixes nor use any of my (very many) iPhones for the cause but basically any work for Linux on iOS devices stalls for years at a time
also going back to school so i don't have a lot of time for experiments anymore -
@justsoup Really interested, got it running on a Pixel 3a.
Still in the phase of finding out how to contribute best when not coding, thinking about testing or documentation.
First hurdle is going onto Matrix, have to figure this out...@ChrisMcZork There's tons of ways to contribute that aren't just coding. That's just a tiny part of what we do (I go weeks without actually writing programs). There's https://postmarketos.org/contribute/, but its made me realize that we probably also need to specify that artwork is also very important! All of our wallpapers come from contributors just making stuff, and I think that is amazing.
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@justsoup A lack of devices that run PMOS, even if we did. Helping getting things like hardware acceleration running, and get the audio and modem to work on any given phone is beyond our knowledge. Other than maybe getting X hardware and test whatever builds people can throw at us theres not much one can do, and, it does not really seem like there is any kind of on-ramp for getting started building those things missing on phones... "draw the rest of the owl" and all that.
@ZanaGB Yeah... that's something that's been talked about a lot but we can't easily solve, since in reality, its a question of how to onboard new kernel developers. There are a few ideas for making the path to porting hardware simpler, but, ironically enough, none of them are simple.
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@justsoup I have little to no knowledge in booting process and device tree of linux and the wiki does not give any clear path to understand how port or troubleshoot a device on PostmarketOS. Love the project btw, but leaving it to people knowing what theire doing.
@epickiwi There's https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Porting_to_a_new_device but I do agree that it is challenging to get started. If you ever want to give it a try, just remember that mistakes are part of the process and nobody will fault you for asking questions. Otherwise, hope we at least look like we know what we're doing
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@justsoup I need to learn first. I am learning electronics, low level programming and etc. Doing projects that take less time but make me learn a lot.
Then I will have enough knowledge for comfortable reverse engineering.
Also I do not like
️:
IRC(cannot edit messages, need bouncer, no good clients for me), Matrix(laggy), gitlab(asks to login often, strange for me), Python.@soupborsh Matrix being laggy is most likely a client issue. What app / server are you using for it? Also, GitLab asking to login has happened to me before. You might be rejecting cookies without realizing it.
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@newbyte@mastodon.nu @justsoup@mstdn.social
i would moreso say the issues are with documentation on trying to modify what pmbootstrap is building things with
i was trying to apply a kernel patch alongside the others for captivate-glide because the port had been broken for some amount of time, where the sd slot was not getting any power to it, causing boot to fail as root couldn't be found (iirc internal boot fails for the same reason, because the emmc is probably powered the same way i would bet)
could not figure out how to get it to want to accept my patch with the other ones
maybe pmbootstrap could get a device bring-up mode where it gives you folders to dump all your components in and needs minimal configuration to use those, for rapidly iterating on things? idk -
@newbyte@mastodon.nu @justsoup@mstdn.social
i would moreso say the issues are with documentation on trying to modify what pmbootstrap is building things with
i was trying to apply a kernel patch alongside the others for captivate-glide because the port had been broken for some amount of time, where the sd slot was not getting any power to it, causing boot to fail as root couldn't be found (iirc internal boot fails for the same reason, because the emmc is probably powered the same way i would bet)
could not figure out how to get it to want to accept my patch with the other ones
maybe pmbootstrap could get a device bring-up mode where it gives you folders to dump all your components in and needs minimal configuration to use those, for rapidly iterating on things? idk@newbyte@mastodon.nu @justsoup@mstdn.social my degree is practically in robotics and automation so this is very much a more hardware-adjacent expert's view on things
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@newbyte@mastodon.nu @justsoup@mstdn.social
i would moreso say the issues are with documentation on trying to modify what pmbootstrap is building things with
i was trying to apply a kernel patch alongside the others for captivate-glide because the port had been broken for some amount of time, where the sd slot was not getting any power to it, causing boot to fail as root couldn't be found (iirc internal boot fails for the same reason, because the emmc is probably powered the same way i would bet)
could not figure out how to get it to want to accept my patch with the other ones
maybe pmbootstrap could get a device bring-up mode where it gives you folders to dump all your components in and needs minimal configuration to use those, for rapidly iterating on things? idk@newbyte@mastodon.nu @justsoup@mstdn.social oh and editing what pmbootstrap does for a step seems impossible? heimdall in some cases was broken for a reason i don't remember, and the fix was simple but i couldn't find a way to get it to change the command run
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@newbyte@mastodon.nu @justsoup@mstdn.social
i would moreso say the issues are with documentation on trying to modify what pmbootstrap is building things with
i was trying to apply a kernel patch alongside the others for captivate-glide because the port had been broken for some amount of time, where the sd slot was not getting any power to it, causing boot to fail as root couldn't be found (iirc internal boot fails for the same reason, because the emmc is probably powered the same way i would bet)
could not figure out how to get it to want to accept my patch with the other ones
maybe pmbootstrap could get a device bring-up mode where it gives you folders to dump all your components in and needs minimal configuration to use those, for rapidly iterating on things? idk@theking @justsoup Do you mean something like this: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/-/work_items/2729
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@theking @justsoup Do you mean something like this: https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/-/work_items/2729
@newbyte@mastodon.nu @justsoup@mstdn.social this does sound useful
i would maybe add the idea of having files to represent the stages of building and flashing everything so they can easily be modded and tweaked too, as it would allow also stepping through things a bit more easily for learning -
@newbyte@mastodon.nu @justsoup@mstdn.social this does sound useful
i would maybe add the idea of having files to represent the stages of building and flashing everything so they can easily be modded and tweaked too, as it would allow also stepping through things a bit more easily for learning@justsoup@mstdn.social @newbyte@mastodon.nu i can add that as a comment on that later too
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@justsoup@mstdn.social @newbyte@mastodon.nu i can add that as a comment on that later too
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@newbyte@mastodon.nu @justsoup@mstdn.social Not really, I actually have a spare that I still need to set up. But that wouldn't make recovering from a broken kernel install any less trouble, it'd just mean I still have another working device meanwhile.
The reason I mentioned the Pinephone specifically is that I don't know how boot is handled on other devices, if any already can choose between kernels. -
R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
Could you clarify what you were trying to do exactly? Happy to hear feedback on how pmbootstrap could be improved UX-wise, I know it has a long way to go 
