Oedem/2009

OpenEmbedded developers' meeting 2009 will be in Cambridge, UK on the weekend of November 7/8.

All developers and other interested parties are welcome.

Location

Reciva Ltd have generously offered to host the meeting at their offices: 509 Coldhams Lane, Cambridge, CB1 3JS.

The Reciva offices are on the east side of the city, about 2km from the centre of town. See below for detailed travel information.

Call Phil on +44 7973 869202 if you get hopelessly lost and cannot find the venue.

Agenda

Friday 2009-11-06

20:00 (approx) Pre-meeting beer session at the Red Lion, Histon, CB24 9BD

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=cb24+9jd&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=11.25,27.905273&ie=UTF8&ll=52.253684,0.105486&spn=0.011375,0.027251&t=h&z=15&iwloc=A

From the city centre, ride the Citi 7 bus towards Cottenham. Pass Histon village green (pond with ducks) on your right, the Boot and Barley Mow pubs on your left, then alight at the next stop and you will be almost directly outside the Red Lion. Travel time from the city is approximately 25 minutes and a return ticket costs about £3. Other travel options include taxi (10-15 minutes, about £10 each way) or walking (50-60 minutes, no charge).

Saturday 2009-11-07

10:00-10:15 Welcome + Agenda

Introductions and discussion/confirmation of agenda

some entries will need to be moved as few of us will have to leave earlier on Sunday (Henning, Marcin and Marco have train at 17:10)

10:15-12:00 OE e.V. meeting (Mickey Lauer / e.V. board)

e.V. Membership Fees

As per our statutes, members can chose their membership fees. We should create recommendations for corporate entities (also indicate what they would gain by that).

Travel reimbursement policy

Financial status

Sponsors: announcement, website and memberships

Public relations committee

12:00-13:00 Establishment of technical steering committee (Phil Blundell)

13:00-14:00 Break for lunch / hacking session

14:00-15:00 OE and Poky (Mickey Lauer)

15:00-16:00 Software development for OE derived distributions

• Quick presentation of KOBE (Eclipse plugin by KOAN for recipe creation and more)

People always want to develop software for the target hardware, what can we do to make developers lives easier? The answer is not always use bitbake. How do we supply toolchains, libraries etc? How are people solving this today?

16:00-16:30 Learning to love USE flags, or, What's a distro for? (Phil Blundell)

16:30-17:00 State of the art in package management (Phil Blundell)

• Why is opkg so bad?
• What alternatives are there?
• What can we do to improve the situation?

17:00-18:00 Hacking session

18:00 Venue closes

Sunday 2009-11-08

10:00-11:00 Splitting the recipes tree (Mickey Lauer)

Many of us feel we should split the recipes up into a couple of smaller categories to be able to handle them in a more efficient way (parsing, switching on/off, etc.), but also to indicate which packages are critical / very well maintained / not maintained at all / ...

11:00-12:00 Future plans for stable branch(es)

• Why stable branch is actually not so stable?
• Creation of long term support branch?

12:00-13:00 Bugtracker Discussion, what to do with the current bugzilla, replace/enhance/abandon. (Graeme 'XorA' Gregory)

13:00-14:00 Break for lunch/hacking

14:00-15:00 Hosting arrangements (Mickey Lauer) (see Infrastructure)

There are still services on amethyst, although former-admin Mickey has requested them to be moved. Obviously some one needs to take the wheel here.

Services on Amethyst:

• patchwork.openembedded.org
• wiki.openembedded.org
• www.openembedded.org

Git repository management issues:

• Clearly identify user branches with a namespace?
• Rename org.openembedded.dev to master?
• CIA commit hook should only report dev branch changes?

15:00-16:00 Death to checksums.ini? (Phil Blundell)

The current method of tracking and verifying checksums on source tarballs has various drawbacks and, due to a combination of technical and social issues, seems to bring few benefits. Can we do any better?

16:00-17:00 BitBake Future Roadmap (Richard Purdie)

17:00-18:00 OE Core Changes (Richard Purdie)

Discuss various possible core changes to OE such as those to the do_stage process, layout variable changes, Candian SDK Generation. Any others planned?

18:00 Go home

Travel

London Stansted airport is the nearest to Cambridge with regular service. (There is a small airport in Cambridge itself but I don't think any scheduled airlines operate from there anymore.)

For those travelling from Europe, Stansted is about a 30-minute train ride from Cambridge city centre and is served by Air Berlin, Ryanair and Germanwings among others. Luton airport is about 1 hour away by bus and is served by Easyjet.

For those travelling from further away, most long-haul flights arrive at Heathrow or Gatwick airports (although there is some transatlantic service into Stansted). Both Heathrow and Gatwick are about 2 hours from Cambridge by train or bus: the train is quicker but involves several changes in London, whereas the bus is slow but cheaper and less complicated.

If arriving at LHR airport, take the Piccadilly line from the Underground station and ride it all the way to Kings Cross St Pancras. Ascend to street level, follow signs to Kings Cross mainline station (not St Pancras: the two stations are different although they share a subway stop) and then look for trains to Cambridge or Kings Lynn on the departure board. There are usually two fast services and two slow services to Cambridge per hour: the slow trains are often overtaken by the fast ones en route so it may be best to wait for a fast service even if this is not the next to depart.

If arriving at LCY, take the DLR to Bank, then change to the Northern Line northbound. From Kings Cross St Pancras, proceed as for LHR, above.

http://nationalrail.co.uk

http://nationalexpress.co.uk/

Alternatively you can take the Eurostar to London St Pancras, which is 50 minutes from Cambridge by train.

Directions from Cambridge rail station to Reciva HQ

By bus (approximate travel time 30 minutes)

- take Citi 1 bus towards Fulbourn, alight at St Andrews church in Cherry Hinton, then walk down Coldhams Lane for about 500 metres. Our building will be on your right and has a large sign on the front reading "Semitool". The Citi 1 route runs 7 days a week, about every ten minutes during the daytime, less often (but still fairly frequent) in the evenings.

- alternatively, take any bus to the city centre and then catch service 16 going out of town (the city centre is a terminus on this route). Alight at the first stop after the Rosemary Branch pub on Coldhams Lane and you will be directly outside the office. Note that bus #16 only runs once per hour so check departure times before choosing this route.

http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/transport

http://www.stagecoachbus.com/cambridge

On foot (approximate travel time 45 minutes) or bike (approx 15 minutes)

- Turn right immediately in front of the station and cross the car park, passing the hotel and cycle shop on your left.

- Upon exiting the car park, go up the steps to the cycle/footbridge and cross to the other side of the railway line.

- Exit the bridge and turn left, then immediately right into Greville Road.

- At the end of Greville Road, go left on Coleridge Road. Cross at the pedestrian crossing and go through the chicane onto the footpath opposite.

- Proceed down Marmora Road. Cross Hobart Road and proceed down the footpath.

- Go left into Montreal Road, then right into Natal Road.

- Go left on Perne Road. At the lights, cross to the other side and go down Brookside.

- When the road bends to the right, do not follow the curve but instead take the footpath directly ahead (across a small bridge). Follow the path until you arrive at the Holiday Inn Express.

- Bear left onto Norman Way. Ascend out of the pit to the traffic lights next to the car dealership.

- Turn right onto Coldhams Lane, then cross to the other side of the street. Pass the yellow self-storage depot, then Reciva HQ is the next building on your left.

See walkit.com for other route suggestions. The train station is at postcode CB1 2JB. The meeting venue is at CB1 3JS, although walkit (and most map sites, including google) place this about 500 metres too far southeast.

Directions to venue by car

From all points north and west

From the A1 or A10, take the A14 eastbound. Proceed along the Cambridge northern bypass. Leave at junction 35 (for Quy, Newmarket) and take the A1303 towards Cambridge, following signs towards the airport. Turn left at the next roundabout (by the corner of the airport) towards Cherry Hinton. At the next roundabout, go straight ahead into the traffic calmed area. Cross one mini-roundabout, then two in quick succession, then turn right at the traffic lights. Look for a building on your right labelled "SEMITOOL"; this is the meeting venue. If you reach the Rosemary Branch pub and Toyota dealership, you have gone too far.

Accommodation

The nearest full-service hotel is Holiday Inn Express, http://www.expresscambridge.co.uk/

Cheapest accomodation is probably the YHA hostel, http://www.yha.org.uk/find-accommodation/east-of-england/hostels/Cambridge/index.aspx

There are various bed-and-breakfast establishments nearby, prices start at approx £35/night

Some other hotels in Cambridge:

http://www.crowneplaza.co.uk/

http://www.devere.co.uk/our-locations/university-arms

http://www.hilton.co.uk/cambridgegardenhouse

http://www.arundelhousehotels.co.uk/

Food and drink

There are no catering facilities on site at the meeting venue. Coffee, tea and water are provided, but bringing your own snack/lunch is recommended. There are shops within about 15 minutes' walk where provisions can be purchased.

Attending for sure

• Philip Balister
• Michael Lauer
• Marco Cavallini
• Richard Purdie
• Marcin Juszkiewicz
• Henning Heinold
• Robert Schuster
• Florian Boor
• Denys Dmytriyenko
• Ken Gilmer
• Esben Haabendal
• Jonathan Cameron