Hi everyone!
Now that the Seabass2 seems to be quite stable and minimally usable and also has about 100 active installs I'd like to ask for your feedback!
Imagine that you could have a perfect code/text editor for your UBports device! What would it be? What features would you like to see implemented? What are the things that you don't like about the Seabass most? What direction should the project progress now?
Issues with the UI? A code linter is a must for you? Let me know what you think!
Hi,
I'm Mikhael, web developer from Siberia. Using Ubuntu Touch as my only phone OS for about two years now. So, first of all, thanks to the awesome community for keeping UT progressing, i'm now using Nexus 5 and it's great with latest OS images!
Currently I'm developing Seabass text editor, but once I have more time I'd like to participate in developing other apps as well.
@joel thank you for your work!
I'm using Ubuntu Touch on Poco as my daily driver and with the latest update to the halium-boot it seems really stable and won't even discharge anymore! Really, today is fifth day since i've charged it and it still has 35% of battery remaining.
The purpose of the post is to provide a guide similar to the one by @Emanuele-Sorce for creating Cordova-based (and maybe other HTML5-based) applications using LXC container. Such applications are built in chroot environment, and build system is for some time unsupported in Xenial. I don't know if there are still any developers who use Cordova for Ubuntu, but if there are some, I hope the guide will be useful.
The steps needed to setup working environment is basicly the same as in original guide with few modifications specific to build environment.
Set up LXD
The steps to set up LXD are the same as in original post
Set up the container
We need 17.04+ container, because fixes for build system are published only there and not in 16.04.
lxc launch ubuntu:17.04 best_container_name_ever
lxc config set best_container_name_ever security.privilegied true
lxc config set best_container_name_ever security.nesting true
lxc exec best_container_name_ever -- /bin/bash
Inside the container
Inside the container we have to do basically the same three things: basic configuration of the system, creation of a new not-root user and configuring clickable. Steps to create basic configuration of the system and a new not-root user are the same as in original post:
apt update
apt install nano sudo git
useradd mr_nice_guy
passwd mr_nice_guy
usermod -a -G sudo mr_nice_guy
# Now we are ready to being the nice guy
su mr_nice_guy
We'll also need to install packages from proposed archive, and so we need to enable the archive by adding something like that to /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu zesty-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
Configure Clickable
PATH.sudo -S apt install nodejs-legacy npm
sudo -S apt install click-dev phablet-tools
wget https://launchpad.net/~cordova-ubuntu/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+build/9778583/+files/cordova-cli_4.3.1-ubuntu12_all.deb;
sudo -S dpkg -i cordova-cli_4.3.1-ubuntu12_all.deb
sudo -S click chroot -a armhf -f ubuntu-sdk-15.04 create
There is also repository with patched File plugin, which gives applications ability to list hidden files and directories.
@Emanuele-Sorce, finally I was able to actually reproduce all the required steps to setup build environment once again, so slightly updated guide is now on wiki
@kugiigi thank you for the feedback!
For some reason Seabass can't execute libertine-launch on Nexus 5, although libertine-launch works fine from Terminal. The problem could be somewhere in between seabass, pyotherside, libertine-launch python script and proot (used by libertine-launch), but unfortunately for now i don't know what exactly goes wrong.
@lsitongia Video output won't work because Pixel 3a doesn't support DisplayPort alt mode over USB. Other ports on the dock might work though (if Pixel supports USB OTG).
Thank you very much for the feedback!
@mihael said in Feedback for the Seabass:
Could we use it to open remote files? (from a server)
Well, maybe one day we could integrate it with sshfs!
@kugiigi said in Feedback for the Seabass:
Like a full-blown IDE or at least a simple one?
Hm, not before I'll find a way to make it a paid app! 
So for now I would call it just a code editor 
@lsitongia, as far as I understand, "Type C" only defines physical shape of a USB port. Inside it could be USB 2.0 or USB 3 or USB 3 + DisplayPort alt mode. Most mid-range phones only have plain USB 2.0/3.0 , and so video output is not supported.
Do you know, is that because it's the lower-cost version of the phone?
I think it definitely helps to reduce manufacturing costs. In case of Pixel devices the absence of physical video out ports also help advertising chromecast devices, I believe . Considering all the things I wouldn't count on support for video output over USB Type-C port on a phone by default, unless it is explicitly advertised in device specs.
@kugiigi said in Feedback for the Seabass:
remember, there was an app before called OnTheRoad. It basically provides a full container and I remember I was able to make clickable work on it. Maybe something like this can be integrated into Seabass
I'm actually thinking about integrating Seabass with Clickable for the next release.
I've found no major issues with executing Clickable from the Seabass so far
@lsitongia, as far as I understand, "Type C" only defines physical shape of a USB port. Inside it could be USB 2.0 or USB 3 or USB 3 + DisplayPort alt mode. Most mid-range phones only have plain USB 2.0/3.0 , and so video output is not supported.
Do you know, is that because it's the lower-cost version of the phone?
I think it definitely helps to reduce manufacturing costs. In case of Pixel devices the absence of physical video out ports also help advertising chromecast devices, I believe . Considering all the things I wouldn't count on support for video output over USB Type-C port on a phone by default, unless it is explicitly advertised in device specs.
@lsitongia Video output won't work because Pixel 3a doesn't support DisplayPort alt mode over USB. Other ports on the dock might work though (if Pixel supports USB OTG).
@kugiigi thank you for the feedback!
For some reason Seabass can't execute libertine-launch on Nexus 5, although libertine-launch works fine from Terminal. The problem could be somewhere in between seabass, pyotherside, libertine-launch python script and proot (used by libertine-launch), but unfortunately for now i don't know what exactly goes wrong.
Thanks everyone for trying the beta!
So far it seems that creating and building projects doesn't work on Nexus 5 or (maybe) on a subset of devices including Nexus 5. Unfortunately, I don't have a Nexus 5 so I can't investigate the issue further.
I can tell though that the issue doesn't depend on architecture (arm64/armhf) or OTA-version, but seems to be more device-specific.
To summarize: at least Nexus 5 seems to be in a list of devices that doesn't support seabass+clickable for now (which is a pity because it's one of a few devices that support connecting external displays). Poco F1 and Xperia X seems to work fine.
So, if you've tried the beta on any device other then Nexus 5 and creating projects from within the Seabass doesn't work, I'd be grateful for any information about your device!
@kugiigi said in Feedback for the Seabass:
Then I tried manually installing clickable in the container via the settings app.
Hm, I've just realized that installing clickable using apt-get probably won't work, because Seabass tries to launch clickable using python3.6 while clickable installed with apt relies on python3.5.
It should be possible to install required version with libertine-launch -i seabass2-build python3.6 -m pip install --user --upgrade git+https://gitlab.com/clickable/clickable.git@subcommands-reduced
@joel thank you for your work!
I'm using Ubuntu Touch on Poco as my daily driver and with the latest update to the halium-boot it seems really stable and won't even discharge anymore! Really, today is fifth day since i've charged it and it still has 35% of battery remaining.
@kugiigi hm, that's ok, it's just a warning. Actual script output should follow that line. What's strange is that there is nothing else in the output...
@kugiigi thank you very much for trying the build!
Oh, didnt know UT is already available for that phone.
UT works pretty well on F1 aside from a few stability issues, even fingerprint sensor works
I still get the error at the end. It says that clickable is not found.
Hm, I think I need to improve logging here
If you have some time, could you please try "Update build container" button on the Settings page in Seabass? It will run a script to install the required version of "clickable"!
@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.