A total noob's guide to kobo dev?

[nihilazo]

Hello,
Does a total noob's guide (covering setting up a toolchain, what libraries are available, how to write kobo-compatible makefiles and things etc) for kobo development on a linux host exist?
I'm familiar with software development and familiar with C++ although getting a language like go or rust running would be nice.

Sorry for the newbie question, I'm struggling to find resources for getting started.
Nihilazo

[sherman]

If you want to go C/C++, you have a couple of options for toolchains. You can use the koxtoolchain to setup a relatively newish GCC (7.x I believe) compiler toolchain on a linux system.

Another option is NickelTC, which is a dockerized toolchain that attempts to closely match the official Kobo toolchain and libraries, and includes a full sysroot for stuff like Qt libraries. It's an old GCC however (4.9).

If you want to use Rust, check out Plato by baskerville for an idea on what can be done.

My own Kobo UNCaGED demonstrates Go on the Kobo.

For displaying stuff to the screen, check out FBInk by NiLuJe.

If you want to see what can be done by integrating with Kobo's main binary (Nickel), check out NickelMenu by geek1011.

NiLuJe also has a package which bundles python, if you want to go that route.

In short, there are plenty of development options available for you to choose from. Pick your poison

EDIT: For whatever you end up doing, touch input and framebuffer handling are going to be the most annoying things to handle. Framebuffer stuff is handled by the afore-mentioned FBInk, but touch input....

[NiLuJe]

Touch input doubly so, because it never matches the fb's orientation (it *generally* matches the actual physical native rotation of the panel, not that you have an easy way to devise that anyway), the translation can be a bit wonky to deal with because of fb rotation quirks on most devices, and the actual protocol is also quirky and device-specific.

Plato should have the most concise implementation of that in a multi-platform way. Cross-ref w/ KOReader for input, and FBInk for fb rotation quirks.

(Since you mentioned C++, the nickel TC is the only way for you to be able to link to the STL dynamically. Newer GCC means newer libstdc++, means you need -static-libstdc++ to ship working binaries . As far as Qt is concerned, someone asked about that not two days ago, c.f., a few threads around this one: TL;DR: can't use the stock QPA as-is, so, PITA again).

[Mavireck]

My answer is not an answer specifically for you, because if you know C++, Rust, Go or any of these, you'd better go with what sherman and NiLuJe pointed out.
However, here is a message for the few beginners like me who will read that thread and who like Python.


I did struggle a lot to get started on the Kobo (I used to do mostly small algorithms to automate small tasks).
I did eventually make PSSM (Python Screen Stack Manager, an ugly name but now it is too late to change it, I will just call it PSSM). PSSM on Github, and its documentation.

It is a whole new librairy, so yes, you will have to learn to use it, because using PyGame, Tkinter or such librairies is way too complicated on recent firmwares (see this thread).

So far, it is working quite well, (see the examples), it handles touch input for the H2O and Mini (the only two devices I can test it on), and it uses FBInk to display stuff. It can be used on a computer with some sort of an emulator to test it. And I did add a few scripts to control Frontlight and Wifi. It also includes a complete on-screen keyboard (which I use to both type things and test PSSM)
It is still in development, I started rewriting it from scratch a few weeks ago to make it more user-friendly.
I did draw inspiration from PySimpleGUI, but I made it a little more flexible to match my needs.


If you don't like PSSM (I can totally understand that), check out my dashboard, which is a standalone Python project inspired by Brunolalb's YAWK (Mobileread or Github)