When I started using Ubuntu Touch, I started developing a document scanner app called Camera Scanner out of curiosity. It turned out I am much more interested into the tooling than app development itself. Many features I contributed to Clickable were inspired by my work on this app while the Camera Scanner only made some progress thanks to contributions from friends (Stefan, Krille, Cibersheep). It reached a state where it kind of works, but not very reliably and with little feedback to the user, making the user experience rather frustrating.

I would love if somebody would be motivated to put love into the Camera Scanner App to make it the great app it could be. If someone would want to "only" take care of the frontend, I'd still be available to put some more work into the backend.

The backend is mostly a C++ reimplementation of the Open Note Scanner backend (written in Java), but less configurable (yet). It makes use of OpenCV for image processing.

I think the biggest hassle in the short run is neither packaging nor the store, but the QML framework and System Integration. It is not too hard to have different packaging configurations in your repo and deploy to different stores.

Pure Maps by @rinigus is a great example on how platform independent mobile linux apps can be done. The most interesting part is the platform abstraction in QML, in my opinion. The app assumes some QML files in a folder called platform, which is just an imaginary interface to Elements like a Button, a Dialog, Clipboard or file chooser (aka Content Hub in UT). Adding support to another platform means to create a new platform folder and implement the interface using the specific platform frameworks stuff. The packager then just links the desired platform folder to platform and builds the app.

Now you may wonder whether it is necessary for each and every app developer to implement each platform support over and over again. And of course it is not. That could be done in one place shared by all apps. Someone has already started that meta-framework-project as a spin-off from Pure Maps, which just needs to be explored and picked up by app developers.

Sure, this won't solve all problems like (push) notification and background services. But it should help a majority of all apps to become available on many platforms.

Marius mentioned he documented how to build the Lomiri stack in the last Q&A. Are those notes available somewhere already?

I didn't touch the README. You downloaded the old 15.04 version. Please build the app for 16.04 using Clickable instead. I don't plan to maintain the app, just wanted to show it is still mostly functional, in case anyone wants to pick it up.

It still works well on Ubuntu Touch. I added a clickable.json and changed the framework to 16.04: https://gitlab.com/jonnius/scriptor
If someone is interested in maintaining the app, please just fork the repo and release it to the OpenStore. The README needs to be cleaned up and the busybox download in app does not seem to work. But I don't think it is even necessary, so maybe it could just be removed.

• There is a brain dump by Marius, where he started with Raspbian.
• There are official Ubuntu Core images
• There are some unofficial Ubuntu server images
• There is also Ubuntu Mate 16.04 for Raspberry Pi

What would be the best to start with?

As far as I see Snappy Ubuntu Core has a very similar approach to Ubuntu Touch with a read-only filesystem and there is an official download for the Raspberry Pi. I wonder how this could be interesting for us? Could'nt it even be a good base for Ubuntu Touch at all, assuming we'd want to switch from click to snap packages, if that would be necessary then.

@aarontheissueguy does it work in Desktop Mode (clickable desktop)? Could you upload the whole app and clickable config somewhere (e.g. Gitlab) and provide the link?

Just my personal opinion: I'd suggest skipping the cross-compiling for now and focus on publishing the app to the Open Store, maybe with a bit of polishing first. I have tried to do the cross-compiling once and it is not straight-forward. Btw, the links on your releases page give 404ers.

Fluffy Chat Flutter is the cross-platform version of Fluffy Chat, providing full E2E support and being actively developed. The QML version of Fluffy Chat will only be maintained on a low level until Fluffy Chat Flutter works on Ubuntu Touch as well (requiring Wayland support afaik), which will make the QML version completely obsolete.

Unfortunately the QML version we have at the moment does not support E2E. As the airport in Berlin is coming close to be opened, we want to provide you with a temporary solution: Pantalaimon.

Pantalaimon is provided by the Matrix Foundation and described as:

Pantalaimon is an end-to-end encryption aware Matrix reverse proxy daemon. Pantalaimon acts as a good man in the middle that handles the encryption for you.

Messages are transparently encrypted and decrypted for clients inside of pantalaimon.

You can find instructions as well as possible next steps in my repository. Feel free to test, provide feedback and jump in to improve it.

Update: Source code and releases: https://sr.ht/~thrrgilag/pantalaimon-ut/

When I started using Ubuntu Touch, I started developing a document scanner app called Camera Scanner out of curiosity. It turned out I am much more interested into the tooling than app development itself. Many features I contributed to Clickable were inspired by my work on this app while the Camera Scanner only made some progress thanks to contributions from friends (Stefan, Krille, Cibersheep). It reached a state where it kind of works, but not very reliably and with little feedback to the user, making the user experience rather frustrating.

I would love if somebody would be motivated to put love into the Camera Scanner App to make it the great app it could be. If someone would want to "only" take care of the frontend, I'd still be available to put some more work into the backend.

The backend is mostly a C++ reimplementation of the Open Note Scanner backend (written in Java), but less configurable (yet). It makes use of OpenCV for image processing.

Maybe neverball is not even the best example, as that are two apps within one click, but we probably need just one app with with a normal app and a daemon which can run as long as the app has focus or continuously if the user disabled app suspension for it (as we currently suggest for OSM Scout Server).

@rinigus I'll summarize the answers from the telegram channel so far:

• you can do a confined dbus client/server in same click, having your own private bus with dbus using a unix socket under $XDG_CACHE_HOME for example
• You can have multiple apps within one click, https://open-store.io/app/neverball.abmyii is an example
• there is currently no solution for background services in a confined app

@thrrgilag nice!

May I ask what keeps you from uploading the app to the OpenStore? I think it is useful the way it is right now.

@alan_g does that mean no need for a PR from my side?

@alan_g installed Ubuntu 16.04 on my notebook directly via Ubuntu Touch (ISODrive is a great tool). Unfortunately the situation here is worse than in my VM on an Ubuntu 20.04 host. I guess the outdated amdgpu for my Radeon Vega 8 Graphics in Ubuntu 16.04 is to blame. The demo runs like in the VM, the same unit test fails, but many smoke tests fail:

I:     mir_demo_client_camera
I:     mir_demo_client_tooltip
I:     mir_demo_client_eglsquare
I:     mir_demo_client_eglplasma
I:     mir_demo_client_eglstateswitcher
I:     mir_demo_client_target
I:     mir_demo_client_scroll
I:     mir_demo_client_cursors
I:     mir_demo_client_egltriangle
I:     mir_demo_client_egldiamond_render_surface
I:     mir_demo_client_display_config
I:     mir_demo_client_eglcounter
I:     mir_demo_client_touch_validator
I:     mir_demo_client_animated_cursor
I:     mir_demo_client_pointer_confinement
I:     mir_demo_client_input_shapes
I:     mir_demo_client_eglflash

So I guess best is to switch back to my VM? Is the failing tests something I could ignore for now?

@alan_g
I was hit by this bug. Now with 3D acceleration enabled most of the smoke tests succeed. Only mir_demo_client_eglplasma still failes. And the unit test I mentioned above continues to fail as well. Will test on separate installation without VM this weekend.

MIR_SERVER_CURSOR=null QT_QPA_PLATFORM=mirserver qmlscene qml-demo-shell/qml-demo-shell.qml works partially. The circle rotates, but the mouse cursor is not visible and clicking the scale buttons results in file:///home/miroil/qtmir/demos/qml-demo-shell/qml-demo-shell.qml:28: Error: Unknown method parameter type: FormFactor.

@povoq with latest Clickable you can test your app in Desktop Mode with CLICKABLE_QT_VERSION=5.12 clickable desktop. That env var works for debugging on device as well, given you got Qt 5.12 installed there.

@alan_g said in Introducing Miroil:

mir-smoke-test-runner

I: The following clients failed to execute successfully:
I:     mir_demo_client_prerendered_frames
I:     mir_demo_client_animated_cursor
I:     mir_demo_client_render_surface
I:     mir_demo_client_basic
I:     mir_demo_client_flicker
I:     mir_demo_client_fingerpaint
I:     mir_demo_client_release_at_exit
I:     mir_demo_client_eglstateswitcher
I:     mir_demo_client_wayland
I:     mir_demo_client_target
I:     mir_demo_client_tooltip
I:     mir_demo_client_eglsquare
I:     mir_demo_client_cursors
I:     mir_demo_client_egldiamond_render_surface
I:     mir_demo_client_egltriangle
I:     mir_demo_client_chain_jumping_buffers
I:     mir_demo_client_touch_validator
I:     mir_demo_client_wayland_egl_spinner
I:     mir_demo_client_progressbar
I:     mir_demo_client_camera
I:     mir_demo_client_prompt_session
I:     mir_demo_client_multiwin
I:     mir_demo_client_scroll
I:     mir_demo_client_display_config
I:     mir_demo_client_screencast
I:     mir_demo_client_eglcounter
I:     mir_demo_client_multistream
I:     mir_demo_client_input_shapes
I:     mir_demo_client_eglplasma
I:     mir_demo_client_eglflash
I:     mir_demo_client_pointer_confinement
I: Smoke testing complete with returncode -1

I am using VirtualBox. I am not sure how to apply the suggestions in the link. Which VM solution would you suggest? Otherwise I'll install the system again on a separate partition without VM.

@jonius next issue is a failing test (ApplicationManager), which fails here.

The demo runs into a segfault as well. (MIR_SERVER_CURSOR=null QT_QPA_PLATFORM=mirserver qmlscene qml-demo-shell/qml-demo-shell.qml).

btw, I am on Ubuntu 16.04 in a VM.