Feedback for the Seabass

mikhael

@kugiigi Libertine (with hardcoded chroot backend for the first release).

Giiba

@mikhael that's a fair point, and I think more than anything consistency could be important. Maybe just sticking with the two icons like the file browser, the top right one is clearly settings which only leaves so many things the hambuger could be (a file browser in a coding app seems logical).

It could be worth asking the famous @CiberSheep for ui advice. But it is not like there is a problem as is, it doesn't take very much poking around to find a file and you only need to do it the once to learn.

A tangential though related feature request would be two things:

Connecting with the content hub to allow opening files with Seabass from the file browser
The ability to view system files in a read-only mode (ie navigating to / and exploring) - as a newbie to linux os's in general I spend a lot of time reading and viewing system files just to learn. Currently uText works for this, but something with syntax highlighting to view qml and bash scripts would really be great for UT. On desktop I use gedit happily, but that's not going to work for us here.

mikhael

Thank you for your thoughts on the Icon!

@Giiba said in Feedback for the Seabass:

A tangential though related feature request would be two things

Thank you! Content Hub for the Seabass is definitely on my todo. It'll take a few releases before Content Hub is implemented though:

v0.5 release will feature building packages with Clickable
v0.6 will probably contain ability to delete files (seems to be the only blocker left before Content Hub integration)
and then v0.7 will probably contain Content Hub integration.

Well, at least this is what I think for now

Capsia

@mikhael Hi,
I agree with @arubislander for the difference between the favorites menu in the file explorer app and the files menu in Seabass.
In the file explorer the menu is used as a bookmark menu to access favorites more quickly, while in Seabass it is used to choose a file and navigate directories. Probably after the first use it will be easy to understand what the icon does, but if you opened the app for the first time it isn't very clear.
I would also prefer the icon to be separate from a settings menu, because it is one of the most frequently used ones.

mikhael

v0.5 is up and it has support for building projects using Clickable.

The feature is very experimental and somewhat limited for now and (although I've tested it as much as I could) there should be bugs. To build a project you need to open a corresponding clickable.json file and click the "Build" button:
Build

When starting a build process for the first time a new chroot Libertine container with ID seabass2-build will be created.
So the first thing required to build packages with the Seabass for now is... patience :-D.
Because creating a chroot container might take a while. About 30min was usually enough for my Xperia X during testing, but the experience for sure may vary depending on your device and Internet connection. The app should also be active (not sleeping) while the container is being created. The good thing is that you only need to create container once.

If for some reason the container creation failed, Seabass will try to delete the container, so that the next time you run Build it could try to create container once again.
And if for some reason the deletion wasn't successful, libertine-container-manager is here to help: libertine-container-manager destroy -i seabass2-build. You could also use this command if anything goes wrong with the container

There are also a few limitations:

Project files should be located inside ~/Downloads or ~/Documents directories. Not really a strict requirement, just these directories are automatically mounted to Libertine containers. Alternatively you could create additional bind mounts using libertine-container-manager or maybe even System Settings application.
clickable.json file should be named 'clickable.json'. Because the "Build" button is only visible for "clickable.json" files.

QML, HTML, C++ and Python clickable templates are supported for the first release (Go and Rust require additional packages that are not installed in seabass2-build by default). By "supported" I mean I've tested building "HelloWorld" applications using these templates

Please let me know if there are missing packages in the container required to build your favorite application!
Your feedback is very appreciated!

mikhael

A few notes on v0.5.0:

Container creation fails constantly for me because of mismatching package versions in the xenial repos.
How to fix: update to v0.5.1
Seabass can't delete the container in case of initialization errors
How to fix: delete the container manually using System Settings app
And in case you've managed to create a container, desktop applications from the seabass2-build container are visible in the app grid.
How to fix: libertine-container-manager exec -i seabass2-build -c "bash -c 'rm /usr/share/applications/*.desktop'"

The issues should be fixed in v0.5.1

danqo6

@mikhael I am getting crash on oneplus 3t edge channel during start.

mikhael

@danqo6 thank you! I can reproduce the issue on Pocophone with GSI. For me the same happens when trying to run other apps that use qmlscene from terminal (I tried it with uNav). But running the applications from the app grid works fine.

Just a guess, but maybe the app grid provides environment variables, that are required but missing when trying to run qmlscene from terminal?

mikhael

@danqo6 does the app works for you when running from the app grid?

danqo6

No, just crashes, not sure how to get log when running from appgrid

mikhael

@danqo6 logviewer from the open store should work for getting logs

Giiba

I am pretty sure that launching apps from the terminal is not a supported feature of UT. Some sort of permissions thing (appArmour) blocks the execution of graphical applications.

Crashing from the grid is a different issue. Try going into

~/.config/
and
~/.local/share/

and delete the seabass folders, then try launching the app from the drawer.

kugiigi

You can run apps via terminal using ubuntu-app-launch. Other than that, it might and or not work.

danqo6

I found the issue, it is this https://github.com/ubports/qtwebengine-opensource-src-packaging/issues/37, I do not have that fix because Oneplus 3 uses gst-droid branch of lxc-android-config

mikhael

Hi everyone!

It's almost Christmas time, New Year is coming, and it means holidays and maybe some spare time for developers to create new awesome apps for UBports... and that's where the Seabass might come in handy

The next release is going to provide an ability to create new apps for UBports from within the Seabass. Hopefully that means building apps right on your phone/tablet more easily.

So if you happen to have a use case for a mobile/convergent dev environment to build UBports apps and you have a device that supports Libertine, I'd be grateful for your suggestions and feedback!

For now there is a beta version available for testing.
It has a new menu entry called "New project..." in the file list:

It leads to the project settings page:

New Project page

Here you can specify all the options supported by Clickable and create a new app.

There are a few limitations for now:

Libertine support is required
Creating a Libertine container (during the first run of clickable) might take a while
Seabass now uses a pre-release version of clickable that might have a few breaking changes
it's only possible to create new projects inside ~/Documents and ~/Downloads directories (and any nested directories)

Click package is available on Github: v1.0.0-beta-1

kugiigi

@mikhael This is looking great! Thank you for putting an effort on this.
I however have problems with the libertine support on my Nexus 5. First of all, it takes like 6 hours creating a container, most likely my connection's fault. And then I get some errors around the part when clickable is being installed. I wasn't able to record the errors though, sorry. Perhaps you can consider other options for the container such as the on used the now unmaintained app OnTheRoad. This one has a compressed prebuilt container so container creation is really fast. I have no idea how complicated to this though
Anyway, I might try creating a libertine container again and see if it'll work.

mikhael

@kugiigi thank you for the feedback!

This one has a compressed prebuilt container so container creation is really fast.

Thank you! I'm thinking about such option because creating a container from scratch seems too unstable and requires too much time even on snapdragon 845. I'd better not imagine how long it would take for example on BQ e4.5

And I like the way OnTheRoad solves the problem.

And then I get some errors around the part when clickable is being installed

Hm, I think it might had been broken for some time. v0.11.2 (currently in the store) should've solved container creation issues by upgrading python to v3.6.

kugiigi

@mikhael Oh wow, which UT device has 845?
I'll be installing the beta version and try creating a container again and let you know

mikhael

@kugiigi thank you! It's Poco F1

kugiigi

@mikhael Oh, didnt know UT is already available for that phone. I though fxtec pro1 x is supposed to be the most powerful UT device

I tried creating container again and luckily, it only took less than an hour this time. Maybe the server is happy today However, I still get the error at the end. It says that clickable is not found. Then I tried manually installing clickable in the container via the settings app. After I've done that, building an app just shows a blank build output.