I said I'd never blog

Today (or tonight) I have finally managed to import most of the fixes pushed into DeforaOS since the last meaningful commits to the RunningBear project (around December 2008 I guess). This was motivated by a few reasons:

• a bug report on memchr() in the DeforaOS libc [1]
• NetBSD booting on N900 [2]
• good progress on DeforaOS [3] [4]
• same on hackable:1 [5]

Unfortunately, it still isn't good enough to support Xynth's user interface on the system [6]. But it's getting close enough, and I think the missing parts are:

• support for setjmp() and longjmp() in the libc;
• same for signal(), checking alarm() too;
• for NetBSD, importing and adapting Linux' <sys/kd.h> to match the wscons API.

These are three hairy issues to tackle, but nothing's too hairy for a RunningBear (hey it's 3 am I'm allowed).

With luck RunningBear could actually begin its career running on both the Openmoko Freerunner and Neo1973, HTC TouchPro and Nokia N900 smartphones, based on either Linux or NetBSD kernels. I'll try to do it with hackable:1 first though :)

Last but not least: RunningBear is on Ohloh now! [7]

The links:
[1] http://www.defora.org/os/project/bug_display/3474?bug_id=40
[2] http://www.netbsdfr.org/?p=1993
[3] http://www.defora.org/os/news/3478/Summary-of-latest-releases
[4] http://www.defora.org/os/news/3484/Release-party-for-RunningBear
[5] http://www.hackable1.org/
[6] http://xynth.sf.net/
[7] http://www.ohloh.net/p/RunningBear