PokerTH Android porting diary - UPDATE 2012-05

UPDATE 2012, May:
May time was also android time! After the first start of PokerTH in the android-emulator the GUI (Graphical User Interface) needs to be adjusted for the android display. The first steps were done on the start window and settings dialog.
The main difference between the android gui and the previous maemo gui was, that maemo users mostly uses the input pen for editing dialogs and input fields. Because android devices are mostly not shipped with input pens, and destinated to be used by finger touch input, many changes have to be done. Many buttons needs to be bigger to be catched also by "bigger" finger tips.
But there are also many dialogs with a lot of information like the settings dialog, which needs to be accessable on a clear widget space without rewriting the complete dialog. When we've found good compromises on the most dialogs the next big step was the gametable. Thanks to floty's maemo gametable gui changes, the main idea howto saving display space was already implemented. For the android version just a few adjustments are left.
So, one special may night the first gametable on a real android device shows up! Btw. the first android device with a running PokerTH app was doitux's Motorola Defy ;)

This article is about the long and difficult story of the PokerTH Android port.

 

UPDATE 2012, April:
Lotodore decided to give the Android port a new chance. He also setup a build environment and tested the PokerTH build. After a lot of testing he got the very unusual idea to rename the /usr/include/ directory to fix the first nasty build error. He was on a virtual machine with ubuntu setup just for this necessitas environment. So the rename of /usr/include didn't break his own productive system :-)

When he fixed the first error there was new drive for the port. Lotodore ported one lib after the other and then he finally got the first running binary. When the other team members checked their news there was a very legendary message readable on 2012-04-14:

[23:47:46 CEST] Lotodore: jaaa jetzt geht es (english: "yeees it works")
[23:47:56 CEST] Lotodore: warum schlaft ihr alle, das ist der durchbruch :-) (english: "why are you sleeping, this is the big break through :-) " )

In this screenshot you can see the running PokerTH lobby in an Android emulator for Android 2.2. Click on the picture for the full-size screenshot.
Now, there a some tasks with the deployment of the gfx and sound files. This is the next big step which has to be done for a first running PokerTH game on Android. But thanks to Lotodore we are closer to it than ever before! And also floty's gui changes for the maemo port are now also used for the Android gui! This is synergy as we like it ;-)

2012, March:
On 2012-03-03 we started to discuss the Android port again. To check the community needs we started a poll about prefered mobile ports of PokerTH
The poll shows us that it would be also VERY nice for the community to have a running PokerTH Android app ;-)

2011, November:
When doitux created the ticket "Porting PokerTH to Android" on the PokerTH bugtracker at 2011-11-17 he hoped to find a community member who has some experiences with ports for the Android OS. Four days later he could fix the first problem (setup the necessitas environment) by himself. But then he ran into very big problems when he started to build the PokerTH sources. There was a really unbelieveable compiler error. He tried some tweaks to fix it but it didn't work. So he attached the error message to the bugtracker in hope of anybody who could help to fix this issue.

2011, October:
On 2011-10-29 the version alpha3 of necessitas was released. Doitux read the annoucement and decided to start a first experimental PokerTH build with the necessitas Qt-for-android port. But the first showstopper was the setup of the necessitas environment. Several hours of reading docs and trial and error sessions ended in the first give-up for the moment.

2011, February:
The PokerTH gui is based on the Qt framework. Maemo is a mobile operating system which is offical supported by Qt.
At the beginning of 2011 floty from the PokerTH development team bought the Maemo mobile device Nokia N900. After this he started his work on a Maemo port of PokerTH. The biggest changes has to be done on the gui because of the smaller display resolution of the Nokia N900. Floty worked hard on every dialog and mostly on reducing the game table gui size. At 2011-02-05 he finished his work with the PokerTH 0.9.2 release for Maemo! So PokerTH has its first mobile device port.

Since doitux and lotodore have bought Android devices (mobile phone and tablet) they hoped that some day the Qt framework will also support Android. But until February 2011 there was no information available about that issue. Then, a magical day doitux found this necessitas announcement link.
The necessitas project is a port of the Qt framework for the Android platform. The annoucement was about the first release alpha1. It was described as unstable: "THE API IS NOT STABLE, please wait until Nokia (or us) will ship at least a beta version!". So doitux decided to keep an eye on this project.