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.
@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
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.
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:
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:
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!
@kugiigi Libertine (with hardcoded chroot backend for the first release).
@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
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
A few notes on v0.5.0:
seabass2-build container are visible in the app grid.libertine-container-manager exec -i seabass2-build -c "bash -c 'rm /usr/share/applications/*.desktop'"The issues should be fixed in v0.5.1
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:
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:
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!
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:
Well, at least this is what I think for now
@kugiigi Libertine (with hardcoded chroot backend for the first release).
@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
@Capsia said in Feedback for the Seabass:
The three lines icon on the top left is confusing: user would expect a drop down menu, but it actually opens a file chooser
@Giiba said in Feedback for the Seabass:
I have to agree about the hamburger menu not being clear.
Hm, thinking of a suitable icon... What do you think about the three lines icon in a File browser (it opens list of directories)? Is it less confusing here then in the Seabass?
@kugiigi said in Feedback for the Seabass:
it's looking for docker images even though I used --container-mode
Yes, the latest clickable and it gives me the same error.
So... I had to comment out this line in clickable script where the error about Docker images is thrown
Then --container-mode seemed to work for me.
@kugiigi Hm, actually, I've just been able to build the Seabass on my Xperia inside a libertine container using clickable, so the integration with a build engine might be possible
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