Dekko2 Developer Community Thread

doniks · 11 Nov 2018, 15:14

This is a place to coordinate developers working on dekko2. (It is not the place to discuss individual bugs)

In the good old days we had dekko and it mostly worked ok. At some point a rewrite as dekko2 was deemed necessary. The rewrite was started but not completely finished. In addition the platform has moved on beneath dekko (xenial). Time has gone by and development rate of dekko has dropped.

As of today, there is no working dekko for xenial UT.

Over the last couple weeks I see here and there on various UT telegram channels messages pop up about various people trying to work on dekko. Some wrestling with the build system. Somewhere a test build showed up. Some critical bugs were mentioned (settings, system load). Workarounds and some fixes too. I think it's time to coordinate efforts. So we don't independently solve the same problems multiple times, but instead move forward faster.

So all you dekko2 hackers, speak up below with whatever you do / did on dekko2. What you need help with.

Let's make it happen!

PS: This is not an attempt to hijack the project from the current maintainer @DanChapman . Personally, I think the best future for email on UT would be a Dan maintained dekko2 with a small community of developers cooperating. Dan seems to be on a hiatus right now. Let's see what the future brings.

PPS: If you are not actively developing on dekko, then help us stay focussed by not going off topic here! Maybe you really want to encourage people to work on dekko. Or maybe you are very frustrated because you really need an email client. Well, yes, we know. We all are. Feel free to up (or down) vote posts. Or maybe you want to report an issue or suggest a feature. Then use the bug tracker. Or you just have a question. Then start a new thread or go here https://forums.ubports.com/topic/1750/dekko-0-1-6-beta2-released/1

doniks · 21 Jul 2018, 08:32

I myself tried to get the setup-dev-env script to work, but learned eventually that this doesn't work right now due to the state of x86 in ubports repository (https://gitlab.com/dekkoproject/dekko/issues/104).

I know others have managed to build dekko, but I am currently stuck with it. Can someone point me to a repo & instructions that work?

doniks · 21 Jul 2018, 09:25

@doniks said in Dekko2 Community Thread:

Can someone point me to a repo & instructions that work?

Rudi gave me this script courtesy of Johannes on telegram: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/6Nry6fPhk5/ Will try it later

hummlbach · 21 Jul 2018, 12:00

@doniks thanks for your initiative. I started building dekko 2 since there was the request for it here and i wanted to have it myself on 16.04 and as far as i understood it @DanChapman doesn't have time for it atm. The "script" above is a destillation of setup-dev-env and build-click using docker instead of lxd/lxc. I wanted to use docker since I like it, am familiar with it, the ubuntu-sdk containers are well maintained by @bhdouglass (Thanks!) and the majority of the app developers are using clickable (which uses docker). I would suggest to fork dekko, feed the commands from my "script" back to the setup-dev-env ... s.t. dekko can be built using clickable (custom build script or how it is called). (Then making a pull request...).
Afterwards we would need to fix the plugins/views (compose/calendar/contacts/settings...) not showing up/being opened...

doniks · 21 Jul 2018, 12:50

@hummlbach said in Dekko2 Community Thread:

The "script" above is a destillation of setup-dev-env and build-click using docker instead of lxd/lxc. I wanted to use docker since I like it, am familiar with it, the ubuntu-sdk containers are well maintained by @bhdouglass (Thanks!) and the majority of the app developers are using clickable (which uses docker).

Great. I still haven't gotten around to test it, but from reading it, it looks to me it could be two scripts: clickable-setup and clickable-build, together with a usage note in README?!

I would not replace setup-dev-env with your new script, since I think the use cases are orthogonal. setup-dev-env attempts to let you build on x86. Also it should enable you to run and test on your dev machine. Furthermore, it's supposedly a way to use the original qtcreator fork aka SDK IDE on your dev machine!

I would suggest to fork dekko, feed the commands from my "script" back to the setup-dev-env ... s.t. dekko can be built using clickable (custom build script or how it is called). (Then making a pull request...).

Agree. Do you have a gitlab repo? Mine is here: https://gitlab.com/dekkoproject/dekko

Do you have an overview who else is hacking on dekko right now? I have a hard time keeping up and keeping an overview with telegram.

Afterwards we would need to fix the plugins/views (compose/calendar/contacts/settings...) not showing up/being opened...

agree

hummlbach · 21 Jul 2018, 14:15

@doniks ah sorry I meant setup-click-env not setup-dev-env... So what i wanted to suggest was removing the lxd/lxc stuff from setup-click-env and call the script inside docker container(s) by using clickable instead... It could be used to build dekko for armhf in the first step and place and later perhaps also for x86 (not sure and not a must of course but perhaps to have it consistent...).
I haven't it forked yet... If you give me (and others) access to your repo we can work on it together there. Otherwise I would also fork it...

doniks · 21 Jul 2018, 14:22

@hummlbach said in Dekko2 Community Thread:

@doniks ah sorry I meant setup-click-env not setup-dev-env... So what i wanted to suggest was removing the lxd/lxc stuff from setup-click-env and call the script inside docker container(s) by using clickable instead... It could be used to build dekko for armhf in the first step and place and later perhaps also for x86 (not sure and not a must of course but perhaps to have it consistent...).

sounds good. setup-click-env should be for clickable imho and thus lxc should go and be adjusted for the new docker setup. setup-dev-env can be revisited later

I haven't it forked yet... If you give me (and others) access to your repo we can work on it together there. Otherwise I would also fork it...

ok. gitlab is down right now for an hour or so. please request access there when it's back (they have a button to request access)

doniks · 22 Jul 2018, 10:11

Created a branch using your build script:

https://gitlab.com/doniks/dekko/tree/building

Dekko should build, install and run now!

thrrgilag · 23 Jul 2018, 19:47

@doniks said in Dekko2 Developer Community Thread:

Created a branch using your build script:

https://gitlab.com/doniks/dekko/tree/building

Dekko should build, install and run now!

I took it for a spin on my laptop running 18.04 but it failed. (Issue #104 I'm presuming). I tried it on another machine I have with 16.04 still and it was able to build and install. Now onto the next step and try to get things functional.

doniks · 23 Jul 2018, 20:35

@thrrgilag said in Dekko2 Developer Community Thread:

I took it for a spin on my laptop running 18.04 but it failed. (Issue #104 I'm presuming).

Ah, sorry, I guess I wasn't clear enough. Follow the README file in that branch. It will build using the clickable docker container. A different approach than in #104.

I tried it on another machine I have with 16.04 still and it was able to build and install. Now onto the next step and try to get things functional.

Nice!

doniks · 25 Jul 2018, 18:20

@doniks said in Dekko2 Developer Community Thread:

Follow the README file
It will build using the clickable

merged to master now. Let me know how it goes!

thrrgilag · 25 Jul 2018, 20:28

@doniks said in Dekko2 Developer Community Thread:

merged to master now. Let me know how it goes!

Builds fine on my 16.04 machine, but not my 18.04 machine. I'm going to assume I have something sideways there that'll need to be sorted out at some point. But it builds!

Now to figure out why the account setup / settings don't work. I'm assuming that's the same point others are at as well?

doniks · 25 Jul 2018, 20:34

@thrrgilag said in Dekko2 Developer Community Thread:

@doniks said in Dekko2 Developer Community Thread:

merged to master now. Let me know how it goes!

Builds fine on my 16.04 machine, but not my 18.04 machine. I'm going to assume I have something sideways there that'll need to be sorted out at some point. But it builds!

strange. I only have an 18.04 machine to test and it works there. also, since it's clickable (ie, docker) it should be mostly independent from what you have locally ....

Now to figure out why the account setup / settings don't work. I'm assuming that's the same point others are at as well?

That's what I was staring at until my eyes crossed from the plugin stuff

thrrgilag · 25 Jul 2018, 22:24

@doniks said in Dekko2 Developer Community Thread:

strange. I only have an 18.04 machine to test and it works there. also, since it's clickable (ie, docker) it should be mostly independent from what you have locally ....

I clearly got something knackered somewhere.

dekko/upstream/ubuntu-plugin/plugins/core/core.qbs:52:9 Dependency 'Qt.core' not found for product 'Contacts'.
Please create a Qt profile using the qbs-setup-qt tool if you haven't already done so.

That pretty much repeats for the other components until it bombs out.

Luksus · 25 Jul 2018, 22:27

I also tried to build it and got the same error on manjaro.

hummlbach · 25 Jul 2018, 22:39

hey @thrrgilag @Luksus @rudi please try to install qemu-user-static on the host (outside docker)... (sudo apt-get install qemu-user-static)

thrrgilag · 25 Jul 2018, 22:45

@hummlbach that was it! Thanks!

hummlbach · 27 Jul 2018, 02:47

short status:

currently my builds are crashing - no clue yet why. Are your builds still working? (also after updating the docker image, keep the old one... ;))
the branch set_windows_visible fixes the windows/components not showing up problem
atm you need to do sudo apt-get install python3-markdown python3-pip python3-jinja2 python3-html2text; sudo pip3 install pynliner to be able to use the composer -> needs to be shipped with the click
setting up an account works well
writing mail works
reading mail mostly fails: html mails fail to display in my case, on some mails it crashes, text mails work (sometimes)
deleting mails doesn't work, something seems to go wrong with the indexing

I suggest to track these issues at https://gitlab.com/doniks/dekko/.

doniks · 27 Jul 2018, 06:21

@hummlbach said in Dekko2 Developer Community Thread:

short status:

Thanks for the update! In the weekend I hope to have some time to check it.

I suggest to track these issues at https://gitlab.com/doniks/dekko/.

As for issue tracking ... my thinking is, I want to minimize the disconnect to Dan's upstream. Having a forked git repo is no biggie. We can ensure to remain mergeable. However, setting up a separate infrastructure to track issues would increase the divide. Maybe we can keep low-overhead quick and dirty issue lists in here, similar to your last post. But if we want to track for a longer time and collect reproductions, patches, whatnot, then I prefer to use Dan's tracker. What do you think? Maybe there is some tagging mechanism....

hummlbach · 27 Jul 2018, 19:09

As discussed on telegram we use dekkoprojects issue tracker at https://gitlab.com/dekkoproject/dekko/issues/ to coordinate our efforts and have issues to refer to in commits...