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ezdiy · 03-21-2020, 11:00 AM

A bit of caution: Pocketbook SDK is a messy voodoo magic.

The official SDK is https://github.com/pocketbook-free and probably https://github.com/pocketbook

However those are somewhat incomplete, meaning it won't allow you to link to a lot of stuff that's actually on the device, plus it attempts to do some horrible things like depend on local system version of headers, which breaks spectacularly unless you have a peculiar distro the sdk snapshot was taken from.

So you'll eventually end up hacking up the SDK to get running anyway - https://github.com/blchinezu/pocketbook-sdk or https://github.com/ezdiy/pocketbook-sdk5

It's not pretty.

The cross compiler binaries are not all that interesting on their own, and indeed you can bootstrap your own gcc from scratch (just configure all paths relative into the forest of hacked up SDK .h/.so/.a files). It's just something incredibly tedious, for little benefit. The reason for that is things like libgcc version - you can't just run a modern gcc in there, as the PB libraries you're forced to use link to old runtimes new gcc won't run with.

Whenever you can, just avoid the SDK, and run a clean toolchain of your choice and static link. Usually you'll want https://github.com/bootlin/toolchains-builder or buildroot. Those are modern, have clean build scripts and all that good stuff. But you won't be able to co call inkview with it. It's for pure side linux stuff (ie what my rooting tools mostly are about anyway).

All Pocketbook CPUs are standard Cortex-A7 targets, there's nothing out of ordinary.

Regarding "nicer" stuff. If you want gui, I've often found myself just scripting koreader in lua to conjure various kludges. That's because you just edit the script on device via samba mount, and live-refresh in app. Shortens testing cycles considerably.

03-21-2020, 11:00 AM	#5
ezdiy Zealot Posts: 121 Karma: 156515 Join Date: Oct 2019 Device: KT, KPW4, PB740-2	A bit of caution: Pocketbook SDK is a messy voodoo magic. The official SDK is https://github.com/pocketbook-free and probably https://github.com/pocketbook However those are somewhat incomplete, meaning it won't allow you to link to a lot of stuff that's actually on the device, plus it attempts to do some horrible things like depend on local system version of headers, which breaks spectacularly unless you have a peculiar distro the sdk snapshot was taken from. So you'll eventually end up hacking up the SDK to get running anyway - https://github.com/blchinezu/pocketbook-sdk or https://github.com/ezdiy/pocketbook-sdk5 It's not pretty. The cross compiler binaries are not all that interesting on their own, and indeed you can bootstrap your own gcc from scratch (just configure all paths relative into the forest of hacked up SDK .h/.so/.a files). It's just something incredibly tedious, for little benefit. The reason for that is things like libgcc version - you can't just run a modern gcc in there, as the PB libraries you're forced to use link to old runtimes new gcc won't run with. Whenever you can, just avoid the SDK, and run a clean toolchain of your choice and static link. Usually you'll want https://github.com/bootlin/toolchains-builder or buildroot. Those are modern, have clean build scripts and all that good stuff. But you won't be able to co call inkview with it. It's for pure side linux stuff (ie what my rooting tools mostly are about anyway). All Pocketbook CPUs are standard Cortex-A7 targets, there's nothing out of ordinary. Regarding "nicer" stuff. If you want gui, I've often found myself just scripting koreader in lua to conjure various kludges. That's because you just edit the script on device via samba mount, and live-refresh in app. Shortens testing cycles considerably. Last edited by ezdiy; 03-21-2020 at 11:17 AM.