Specifications

SHARP CORPORATION
Sharp SL-series Zaurus “Qtopia” Development Start-up Guide
Ver 1.11, February 28, 2003, 40/63
3. Installing Applications to the SL-series Zaurus
Once you have successfully built your application, you need to create the installation package, known as “ipkg”
package to actually install your applications on the SL-series Zaurus.
In order to create the ipkg package, application developers must first make the directory structure on the
PC-Linux and create some necessary files, and make sure to locate all necessary files in the appropriate
directories. This is important to correctly install and run applications on the SL-series Zaurus.
Please also note that the SL-5600, SL-C700 (Japan domestic model), and SL-B500 (Japan domestic model) now
adopt “root” and “user” privileges for security reasons. Different from the SL-5500 (and SL-A300), these new
SL-series Zaurus run 3
rd
party applications with the “user” privilege by default. It is also strongly recommended to
incorporate the special considerations for thse models so that your application will run all of the SL-series
Zaurus.
3.1. The ipkg package
The SL-series Zaurus uses the ipk package format. iPKG is a very lightweight package management system. It
was designed for Linux installations with severe storage limitations such as handheld computers. This document
provides the basic knowledge on how to build an ipk. Advanced features, and more detailed explanations of ipk
can be found at http://www.handhelds.org/z/wiki/iPKG
.
An .ipk file is basically a gzipped tar archive containing following 3 members:
./data.tar.gz
: contains the actual files belonging to this package. The contents of this directory will be
extracted to "/" (The root directory) when installed by ipkg. So it should contain entries such as ./usr and ./etc as
top-level directory entries, if necessary.
./control.tar.gz
: contains meta-data and scripts for the package. It must contain a file named
control
(see following sections for the details). It also may contain the following files:
conffiles
,
preinst
,
postinst
,
prerm
,
postrm
.
./debian-binary
: This file is currently ignored by ipkg. However, in all current ipkgs it is a text file with a single
line: 2.0
3.1.1. Making directories for .ipk package
In order to create an .ipk package, you may first want to make the directory structure on your PC-Linux that is the
same directory structure as the on on the SL-seires Zaurus. On the SL-series Zaurus, because applications are to
be installed in the /opt/QtPalmtop directory, the following illustrates the typical directory struture that you should
make on your PC-Linux.
Note that following explanations and example assumes creation of very basic .ipk, and you are encouraged to
also refer to http://docs.zaurus.com/ipkg_howto.shtml
or http://www.handhelds.org/z/wiki/iPKG for more
advanced usage: