@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

@Eureka, you can use sudo with -S flag, for example: sudo -S apt install lxd

Guide for creating working chroot-based environment

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.

1. Set up LXD
   The steps to set up LXD are the same as in original post

2. 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

3. 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  
   

4. Configure Clickable

• Download clickable and add it to PATH.
• Install NodeJS:

  sudo -S apt install nodejs-legacy npm  
  

• Install build tools

  sudo -S apt install click-dev phablet-tools
  

• Download and Install cordova-cli package from Cordova PPA (the PPA is only for Xenial, so I downloaded it manually):

  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  
  

• Create chroot environment for building apps:

  sudo -S click chroot -a armhf -f ubuntu-sdk-15.04 create  
  

  That's it. We now should have a working clickable environment for building Cordova apps.

5. Notes on Cordova usage
   There are number of unfixed long-standing issues with Cordova for Ubuntu. So if you'd like to create apps using Cordova, you might be interested in project's fork, i've created. It is based on last official version, but adds few fixes that make it more usable:

• WebView is automatically resized when on-screen keyboard is shown/hidden
• Copy/Paste operations are supported with touchscreen

There is also repository with patched File plugin, which gives applications ability to list hidden files and directories.

@tomoqv said in Trying to setup clickable with chroot:

E: 10mount: mount: unknown filesystem type 'overlayfs'

I've had the same issue when building Cordova apps. I think the problem is with schroot package that is used by SDK. I solved it by installing original 16.04 (not 16.04.2) image into virtual machine and then Not updating it.

@Emanuele-Sorce, I agree, most of problems, I'm facing with in Cordova while updating Seabass, are also due to outdated components and unsupported build tools.

But, I think, except those issues, Cordova has some nice features, such as cross-platform availability (which is a good selling point for going with HTML5 instead of native apps, in my opinion) and a good plugin-based architecture with simple command line tool for creating/managing apps (no need to study platform-specific SDK's for developers). When year ago build tools were just working it was really easy to create Cordova-based apps for Ubuntu.

Maybe what we need is to just keep Ubuntu's components for Cordova updated?

@Emanuele-Sorce, I believe, Cordova might be what you are looking for. The framework has APIs for HTML5 apps to access internal storage, camera and geolocation. There are number of other useful plugins available for Ubuntu in their repo.

Content-hub is also available for HTML5 apps.

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.