09-30-2020, 12:38 PM
It depends on what you're trying to do - most of the software running on the PinePhone is generic linux software that was never aimed at the PinePhone. If you're doing something generic than you should be able to develop much as you would any other linux app so long as you take care about how it'll fit on the screen. The VM stuff and the environment set up by pmbootstrap should help. If you're doing something that interacts with the hardware then you'll need an actual PinePhone for testing since so far as I know there isn't a VM that emulates all the hardware interfaces. For hardware that's abstracted (modem behind ModemManager or oFono for example) you may be able to get away with not having the hardware.