On 12/15/2012 10:29 AM, Sebastian Reichel wrote: > On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 07:06:01PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: >> On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 06:03:27PM +0100, Sebastian Reichel wrote: >>> The package will generate a tinyos-source binary >>> package. >> >> What exactly does the package do? Does it download the current >> upstream source and builds it for deployment? > > No. The source is included in the package. Similar to the > linux-source package. > >> What's the advantage of having this as a package in Debian? Can it be >> used for something on a running Debian system? > > In short: > > The package is needed for developing TinyOS based applications for > small embedded devices as found in sensor networks. > > A bit more descriptive: > > TinyOS is not like a normal operating system. As mentioned in the > description it's intended to be used on very small devices. > Since these have very little memory/processing power a normal > operating system kernel (e.g. Linux) cannot be used on them. > > The solution of TinyOS is having a very small operating system, > which is statically linked together with the user written software > into one big binary. This binary is then uploaded to the > microcontroller. I did some development TinyOS during my graduate work and I think packaging it for Debian is a great idea. Having the source and other tools packaged makes Debian more attractive as a development platform for TinyOS developers, researchers, and students. Or more to the point, the convenience of having it packaged makes organizations that support those users more likely to opt for Debian as a platform. (When I was working with it, it was relative chaos with some folks working under Wine and the rest of team spread across different distributions, everyone installing tinyos and the toolchain by hand.) Thank you for considering packaging this for Debian. tony
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