Replicant

This is sad. I probably marked the message as "answer later" and it got forgotten.

Short answer: yes, N7100 is good device and we may port Replicant to it in the future. That is, of course, if we can get Replicant 4.2 up and running!

I have the l900, which I will be developing on.
I believe the only significant difference between n7100 and l900 is the modem.

That's great! As I said on my other message, you'll probably have to wait for Replicant 4.2 though. Indeed, the difference seems to be the modem, so we still have to evaluate how good qualcomm modems are when they are "alone" with an Exynos SoC (on security matters). Then you have to know that there is no free RIL for QMI (the qualcomm modems protocol) but there is documentation about it and there is a free implementation, libqmi, available at FDO, that is already used with NetworkManager. So it's doable, but will require development time.

Paul,

Thanks for the information about the modem. I'll be looking more into that.
Also, in terms of development, I'm confused what you mean by waiting for Replicant 4.2. I thought it was already running on one device and just need to keep adding devices. Also, since I saw that, I know it's not linked on the wiki yet, but I tried downloading the source for 4.2 with repo. It seemed to work, although I have not yet looked very thoroughly through the files or tried to build it yet.

Yes it is running, on my self-cooked development build. I started (slowly) pushing parts to the Replicant repos and I think you should be able to build something for a few devices in some days. It is not yet to the point where it is a good base for porting new devices: it's still in an early stage, but it's coming forward.

This device also has an LTE version (http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/T0lte_Info) that appears to be a similarly suitable target for Replicant.

...with the exception of its large number of proprietary files: https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_device_samsung_t0lte/blob/cm-10.2/proprietary-files.txt

That's not what I call large! Mostly, these blobs are for the RIL, but there is a free software QMI implementation already. I will however do the non-LTE version in priority.

I received the device today, it should be part of the first Replicant 4.2 images.

I mistakenly got the t0lte version (N7105) off ebay. I am eager to get replicant working, though, and have free time. Paul, is the t0lte version something you are currently working on or not? How should I begin replacing those blobs? From where should I grab the free QMI implementation and how do I start integrating it?

Edit: I've read the build and developer guide and have compiled Replicant for my Galaxy Nexus before, and I'm currently running nightly CM on this Note 2.

Well yes, that's possible, but you're going to have to write a Radio Interface Layer for QMI.
To get started, you can grab the t0lte device source code and build a Replicant system for it (look at the commits made on smdk4412-common and n7100, it shouldn't be too different).

The first step would be having t0lte working as well as the N7100, minus the modem.

• https://gitorious.org/replicant/device_samsung_n7100/source/0f2facf126c7ef278ee40143ff701a2f3daeb8a0:
• https://gitorious.org/replicant/device_samsung_smdk4412-common/source/42a28a22755ff7b2224e609afb06903688d85f40:

FDO's libqmi is at: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libqmi/tree/src/ and I think it's used in ModemManager: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/ModemManager/ModemManager/

• https://gitorious.org/replicant/hardware_ril_hayes-ril/source/568ea7160a57bffa325e851854839db184480867:
• https://gitorious.org/replicant/hardware_ril_hayes-ril/source/568ea7160a57bffa325e851854839db184480867:

Note that I'm currently in the process of rewriting Samsung-RIL because I don't like the way it currently is. I'd be happy to talk more about RIL design principles if you want.