Porting GNU Go to S60

Currently I am in the process of porting the Free Software Foundation's GNU Go application to Nokia's S60 (Series 60) platform based on SymbianOS. This blog is intended to document my experience of doing just that.

I am going to target both the second and third edition S60 SDKs, so hopefully if all goes well I should be able to get this running on a good selection of phones. I will also do as much verification on real hardware as possible, because there's always a difference between running on different devices. But anyway for now, focus is on the emulator provided with the SDKs.

Why Go? Because I am interested in it, though I am still a complete beginner. I usually play 9x9 board on my PC. 19x19 board games are a little too long for me, and my skill level is not really up to competing.

Why GNU Go? Well, it's Free Software, so that means that the source code is available for me to modify under the terms of the GPL, and that suits me fine. My aim is not to write a new Go application, but rather to get something that I can use on my phone. GNU Go has no GUI unfortunately, so I will have to write that myself, though that should be straightforward enough.

Why S60? Well, because that's what my phone runs, and I would like something something to divert myself while commuting to and from work. Also, doing stuff with S60 is what pays my bills, so this is a good way learn some more about S60 from the application development point of view.

For the first few posts the blog will not be in "real time", because I have already saved up some material, that I will put here from tomorrow (once I remove all the griping about my platform of choice :)

I'll let you all know when my posts are back in normal time (It'll be when the astounding progress of the first few posts slows to a crawl).

That's it for now. Wish me luck!