Mailpile on Ubuntu Touch?

frthjf · 26 Dec 2018, 17:45

Hi,

I was wondering whether it might be possible to package and run Mailpile as an email app on Ubuntu Touch (compare installation instructions). I'm looking for a good Ubuntu Touch email client and while I'm aware of Dekko, I'm not sure if it can provide a fully-featured stable Gmail like experience in the near future (particularly when it comes to encryption).

My question is whether it would be technically possible to provide an Ubuntu Touch 'app wrapper' around the upstream Mailpile package and if so how complicated that would probably be. From what I understand, it is possible to run Python-based backends and HTML based interfaces on Ubuntu Touch but I'm not sure about actual limitations in comparison with an official Ubuntu Desktop system.

Thanks for any insight/thoughts on that topic!

UniSuperBox · 28 Dec 2018, 17:17

Looks like Mailpile is an application which you would run on a server and connect to your IMAP mailbox. It is not an application that you'd run on your phone.

If you were to install Mailpile on your own server (at home or otherwise) and connect it to your inbox, you could use the Webapp Creator to get your own personal home-screen bookmark to your Mailpile server.

frthjf · 1 Jan 2019, 13:18

Thanks for your reply! Right, the thing is I'd need internet connection on my phone for the webapp to work, so there wouldn't be offline use. That's why my reasoning was, hey, why not treat my phone as a server but maybe that's not possible because it's not as easy as installing apache2 on ubuntu desktop to get a server right?

tera · 1 Feb 2019, 16:40

Assuming your phone is always connected, i do like the idea of having a local server running and offering a UI to a personal or cloud hosted mail server. It represents less work from a security perspective

Happy new year 2019 wherever you are
Peace

padu · 26 Jun 2019, 13:35

@UniSuperBox No, Mailpile is an email client. From the mailpile faq
What is Mailpile?
Mailpile is software, an e-mail client. It runs on your desktop or laptop computer and you interact with it by using your web browser.
So the frontend is the browser, but the backend is nevertheless meant to be installed on your local device.

hummlbach · 28 Jun 2019, 04:39

If noone else answers, I will give my unqualyfied answer...: Yes its a client with a backend written in Python (says the faq) which then must act as (or come together with) a webserver. So its also a webserver. Which means it would need to run unconfined (if used as is, a way to avoid that may be to install a URL request interceptor and let that call the backend using pyotherside). You won't get the ut look and feel, but you will get some morph issues.
All in all given it uses responsive webdesign (not sure about that, I'm afraid it doesn't, you could try by making the browser window on desktop small and portrait) its an interesting candidate (for bringing an non ut app to ut) imho, but won't work out of the box if you wanted to do it properly.