[needs-packaging] GeoClue - GIS Geospatial Information Service and API using D-Bus

[Tree MendUs]

URL:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/GeoClue

Description:
GeoClue - The Geoinformation Service
Geoclue is a modular geoinformation service built on top of the D-Bus messaging system. The goal of the Geoclue project is to make creating location-aware applications as simple as possible.
Geoclue is developed for Linux, but should be portable to any platform that uses D-Bus.
Geoclue defines a set of geoinformation APIs, but it also includes some providers that implement those APIs. Here is a list of services provided through Geoclue with the currently included implementations:

a) Position
    gpsd, gypsy, hostip, plazes, gsmloc
b) Address
    hostip, plazes, manual, localnet
c) Velocity
    gpsd, gypsy
d) Geocode
    geonames, yahoo
e) ReverseGeocode
    geonames

Geoclue source code contains:

    * D-Bus definitions for the above APIs
    * C bindings for Geoclue clients
    * C bindings for data providers
    * a set of provider implementations
    * (experimental) master provider implementation.

Possible data sources
    * Google Maps Geocoding API -- License says "only for showing places on Google Maps"
    * Wigle.net-- WIFI location database (10 million networks). License requires users to login.
    * geocoder.us -- geocoder for the USA (TIGER data)
    * gsmloc-provider could easily get the GSM information using AT commands on the OpenMoko platform
    * We really should have a free network location database (like gsmloc.org, but for WLAN, GSM, BT, ethernet gateway, ..
          o What about opencellid?

License:
Geoclue is Free Software, licensed under GNU LGPL.

[Tree MendUs (tree-mendus-deactivatedaccount)]

Not packaged, so too early to request a backport.

[Craig (candrews-integralblue)]

FYI - Fedora packages geoclue.

[Craig (candrews-integralblue)]

Packaging has already been done for Maemo (and since that uses debs...). So the effort should be pretty low.

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/geoclue/

[Tree MendUs (tree-mendus-deactivatedaccount)]

re; Maemo
an extract from http://maemo.org/intro/

Maemo is a software platform that powers mobile devices such as the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. Maemo platform has been developed by Nokia in collaboration with many open source projects such as the Linux kernel, Debian, GNOME, and many more.

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Maemo has a GUI which is good. The Maemo project appears to have made their version for mobile device, and this may be a subset of the full applications/capabilities of GeoClue .

It might be an idea to do another separate package request for Maemo.

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I might be mistaken, but I thought Fedora was an offshot from Red Hat which uses RPMs instead of Debian DEBs.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

note that maemo packages rarely are packaged according to debian policy (90% of their packages are native packages which isnt desired in either ubuntu or debian).
the maemo package needs to be inspected closely in this regard...
a more proper approach would be to either get it syncable into debian or to do a fresh package from the upstream source that goes through the REVU review process to make sure the package meets the quality standards.

[Craig (candrews-integralblue)]

geoclue has a gypsy backend. Gypsy packaging requested in bug 296983

[Anders M-Pedersen (s071313)]

Thanks to Craig Andrews, we now have Ubuntu debs:

https://launchpad.net/~s071313/+archive

[Wouter Stomp (wouterstomp-deactivatedaccount)]

http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/geoclue