Core Apps forked on Github

wgarcia

@Bastos I agree 100%, but unfortunately I think the legacy phones are too limited to run an emulator on top of the main operating system, we may have to wait for something like that once we have the OS running on more powerful phones. Apart from the challenges that such an emulator would imply, which should not consume resources at this stage, IMHO.

flohack

@wgarcia Well actually Anbox has a potential here: Its not an emulator, it will execute Android code natively, just in a container. So unless Dalvik sucks up the whole memory it will have nearly the same performance as Android on the same phone, at least thats what I understood..

wgarcia

@Flohack That's great to hear, but a container needs some memory, right?, and it has to have the native OS behind it "containing" it. But if I see an Android app running on my phone, no matter how simple, I think it will be a huge step forward.

flohack

@wgarcia Yes memory can be an issue, so Anbox might not work on the 1GB devices... regarding native OS, Android is not much more than kernel + drivers + Dalvik + surfaceflinger. So, we already got kernel & drivers running in Ubuntu, so we need only an LXC container for Dalvik probably

BR

sverzegnassi

@Phil-UK That's the point. For each service you use, there are at least other five services an OS should support. For example, WhatsApp has been the reason why I never switched to an Ubuntu phone as main device.

About core apps: I agree, there's a lot to be improved yet, and my rational thinking says that we should focus only on a small set of core apps, on a specific type of device (i.e. phone) and forget the rest.
What we'd need then is to provide the best development framework we could offer, in order to allow third parties to support those services with the minor effort.

I'm going a bit OT, but you can understand how I think that we should stop talking about convergence and focus on having something that really works first.

The biggest chance for me to switch to UT has been the BQ M10, as a replacement for my old netbook. I want convergence, but it needs to be something that really works, with no hackish stuff.
IMHO, if the BQ M10 was shipped with Ubuntu GNOME (and GNOME Shell), that would have been the best buy for everyone. UT was pretty far from offering such user experience.

This is something that should be considered for future development.

UKPhil

@sverzegnassi, I totally agree. There needs to be something that can be out there and really works and then build upon it. I did buy the BQ M10 and still find it to be a nice bit of kit. True there are a few issues with it that really need to be sorted out to make it more user friendly, but on the whole I use it every day. On it I use the browser, email and telegram. On my E5, I use all of that and more, however on the tablet that is it. With the small set of core apps per device, that is a good idea. Look at the basic things people want in a device and then provide a set of core apps for that. The phone core apps and the tablet ones will be different.

flohack

So its about one week after publishing "our" Github repos for the Core Apps. So far little interest of people wanting to maintain or code. Guys, if we dont start getting this rolling, there will be no progress soon...

wgarcia

@Flohack Can you provide the link?

GIEMME

@wgarcia You find it here: https://github.com/ubports

GM

wgarcia

I'm trying to configure the ubuntu sdk for the terminal app. But when I try to install dependencies from the ports.ubuntu.com repository, it tells me it can't find it. Is it related to the fact the Ubuntu Vivid is end of life or do I have something missconfigured in the SDK? I tried to update a kit that I had and it also told that it could not find the repositories. What type of SDK are you guys using?

flohack

@wgarcia Vi xD => I am using the SDK only as a text editor ATM... For maintenance I hope this will be enough... xD

wgarcia

@Flohack Can you summarize exactly what are the most common tasks to maintain a core app? I was looking into merging some of the pending patches and try them, but for that I need a SDK, and as I said I have trouble connecting to the repositories to update the SDK and download dependencies.

wgarcia

Nevermind my message above, I could update finally the Ubuntu SDK and build the terminal-app. Now I have another issue that is the generated click package doesn't install properly in my device, but I will try to figure out that myself.

wgarcia

I could build the terminal-app and package it as click. But when I install manually the click package in my phone to try it, it installs without error but it is not seen in the app scope, even after restarting the phone, so I can't start it. I don't get any errors neither in the build process nor installing it.

I tried launching it using "phablet-shell" with:
ubuntu-app-launch com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7.
but no matter how I write the name of the app I get:
** (process:12079): WARNING **: Unable to start app 'com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7.': AppID is empty
I've also tried with other combinations from the name of the click package:
com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7._armhf.click
like "com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7._armhf" or just "com.ubuntu.terminal" and similar, but always the same message. I also tried with "terminal-app" but same message.

Then I checked in .local/share/applications and there I could find a desktop file and this line to launch the app:
Exec=aa-exec-click -p com.ubuntu.terminal_terminal_0.7. -- lib/arm-linux-gnueabi
hf/bin/terminal
I tried then:
aa-exec-click -p com.ubuntu.terminal_terminal_0.7. -- lib/arm-linux-gnueabi
hf/bin/terminal
and get:
aa-exec: ERROR: profile 'com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7.' does not exist
I also tried without the last option as I don't have the directory:
aa-exec-click -p com.ubuntu.terminal_terminal_0.7.
same message.

Any tip to debug this, very welcome.

sverzegnassi

@wgarcia Could you please tell us how you install terminal-app on your device? (the exact sequence of steps you take - from building to installation)

i.e. If you use the Ubuntu SDK green "play" button on the sidebar, that's just meant to build and run your application for debugging/development reasons. Once you close the application on your device, the built package is uninstalled. You should use the actions in the "Publish" tab instead, if that's the case.

wgarcia

@sverzegnassi I first built the app, 1) cloned the git repository, 2) opened it as a project in the SDK, 3) followed the steps explained in : https://github.com/ubports/terminal-app to install dependencies and so on, 3) build the app using the option to build it for device, 4) published it and got a click package in the build directory, 5) transferred the app to my phone and run this from the command line in the phone: pkcon --allow-untrusted install-local com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7._armhf.click , it showed it was installed without any error.

But then I coudn't find the app in the app scope, and using the methods described in my previous message I could not start the app either.

sverzegnassi

@wgarcia Thanks for the exhaustive reply, within the SDK you have 3-4 ways to install apps - I needed further informations.

Have you tried to trigger a "pull down to refresh" gesture in the application scope, in order to refresh the scope content? When you install apps from terminal, the scope doesn't get automatically refreshed.
Otherwise, I'd suggest you to install "UT Tweak Tool" from the OpenStore, which performs all the steps automatically.

wgarcia

@sverzegnassi Thanks, yes, I tried to refresh the App store and also to restart the device, to no avail. I have the UT Twek Tool installed, but why is it useful for for this problem?

sverzegnassi

@wgarcia You can install click packages with UTTT (it's under the "System" tab).
Unless there's something wrong with your device configuration or the package, it should just work since it performs all the relevant steps (at least, I released UTTT two years ago and I never got any problem).

Forget what I said anyway, now I recall that after I leaved the terminal-app team, it received some contribution in order to converge to desktop platform. There might be a problem in the source code, let me check...

sverzegnassi

@wgarcia Ok, I see a couple of problems now. I apologise for not checking earlier.

The version: "0.7."
I guess that last dot is giving some trouble to the system, which can't properly register the application. This is something we need to fix after we've moved the core apps from launchpad.net to GitHub, since we can't invoke "bzr revno" anymore.
Usually other core apps specifies a fallback string in case "bzr" is not available. I see such fallback is missing in terminal-app.

Look for the following piece of code in ./CMakeLists.txt (should be at line 46)

if(NOT BZR_REVNO)
  execute_process(
    COMMAND bzr revno
    OUTPUT_VARIABLE BZR_REVNO
    WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}
    OUTPUT_STRIP_TRAILING_WHITESPACE
  )
endif(NOT BZR_REVNO)

And add the following:

if(NOT BZR_REVNO)
  set(BZR_REVNO "latest")
endif(NOT BZR_REVNO)

After this change (and having disabled tests for convenience), I've been able to launch the app on my BQ.

QML imports
There's another problem that clearly Canonical engineers forgot to fix. They forgot the phones.
The source code has been updated to use QtQuick 2.5 imports, which require Qt 5.5 to be installed on the system. Sadly, Ubuntu Touch is still on Qt 5.4, therefore the application can be launched, but it get stuck on the loading screen.

We need to check if QtQuick 2.5 is really necessary and, in case, downgrade to Qt5.4. I don't exclude further issues anyway.