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Re: Running background services

 

Scott, careful, we might end up on the bad side of things, as developers
would want their app to be running all the time so he will abuse this, and
we end up having all the things running all the time and the enduser gets
bad performance, battery life and overall bad experience.

I think I have raised, a while ago, the same points Michael Zanetti is
making. Couldn't explain them well enough... But how do you prevent them
from using too much, and how much is too much? What metrics would you use
to find out how much is too much?

Zisu Andrei


On 14 August 2013 10:43, Scott May <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  Thanks for that link Thomas - very helpful!
>
> I'm sorry to say I'm still a little confused about one thing (amongst
> many!)...
>
> I'm writing an app that is taking this shape:
>
> - An app that can start and stop as the user and OS decides - which acts
> as the interface between the user and a daemon, which does the real work.
> - The daemon, which as I said, does the real work.  This needs to keep
> running.
> - Lots of little apps with NO user interface that do work for the daemon,
> running very briefly.  Planning to do it this way to make it easily
> extensible.
>
> Is this a model that will work in our scenario?
>
>
> The app is a little like Cuttlefish (Linux), or Llama or Tasker (Android)
>
> Thanks!
>
>  Till later,
> Scott.
> ______________________________
>     Scott May.
>     scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>     Mobile  0417 195 018
>
>
>
> On 14/08/13 18:34, Thomas Voß wrote:
>
> Please also see:
>
>   https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/client-1303-add-app-model-and-lifecycle-to-platform-api
>
> and the linked documents for further details.
>
>   Thomas
>
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Thomas Voß <thomas.voss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> <thomas.voss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>  The state of an application is transparent to the user. Behind the
> scenes, the system can decide to stop/kill non-focused apps at its own
> discretion. Whenever the system alters the state of an app to "not
> running" it offers an archive such that the app can persist its state.
> With that, a user ideally never realizes that an app has been stopped
> or killed.
>
> Thomas
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Tobias Havla <tbhavla@xxxxxxxxx> <tbhavla@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>  On 14.08.2013 10:04, Thomas Voß wrote:
>
>  On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 9:56 AM, Tobias Havla <tbhavla@xxxxxxxxx> <tbhavla@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>  On 14.08.2013 09:54, Thomas Voß wrote:
>
>  On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 9:41 AM, Michael Zanetti<michael.zanetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> <michael.zanetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>  On Wednesday 14 August 2013 09:31:31 Daniel Holbach wrote:
>
>  Hello,
>
> On 14.08.2013 09:29, Michael Zanetti wrote:
>
>  On Wednesday 14 August 2013 09:07:52 Thomas Voß wrote:
>
>  Hey Fabio,
>
> no, applications are not allowed to run in background. Our application
> lifecycle is strict in this respect and we only guarantee focused
> applications to be running.
>
>  Does that mean I will have an Ubuntu Edge phone with 4GB of RAM, 8 CPU
> cores and cannot do multitasking on it?
>
>  I don't think anyone specified the phone to have 8 CPU cores - where did
> you read that?
>
>  Nowhere... I think you get my point...
>
>
>  How is "app authors can write daemons" = multitasking?
>
>  How does this relate? Thomas said there will be no running apps in the
> background / minimzed apps, which to me means there will be no multitasking.
>
>
>
>  We have had this conversation multiple times in the past, and version
> 1 of our application lifecycle will not allow to run arbitrary
> applications in the background. Instead, we will provide selected
> services to hand over to the system for certain tasks, e.g.,
> downloads, alarms, music playback. Please note that this is a policy
> targetted towards the "mobile phone" usage scenario and swapping
> policies at runtime when transitioning to different usage scenarios is
> one of the primary goals of the lifecycle architecture.
>
> Version 2 of the lifecycle will then allow applications to run their
> own background tasks, UI less, with restrictions on
> CPU/Memory/resources in general.
>
> Thomas
>
>
>  --
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>
>  If Ubuntu Touch doesn't support multi task it is far behind iOS,
> Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry. Sorry, I thought it would be a
> modern system that requires a lot of power, so we can do the same things
> as on our PCs.
>
>  Okay, let's be clear here: Multitasking and application lifecycle are
> related but distinct topics. Obviously, Ubuntu Touch will support
> multi-tasking, but an application lifecycle architecture that allows
> for controlling resource consumption of applications by the system is
> sorely needed to ensure a long-running _mobile_ device. It is not
> sufficient to assume that app authors will get it right and it is
> important to note that users always "blame" the platform for bad
> battery life. And that is for a good reason: It's the platform's/OS's
> responsibility to put mechanisms in place to manage a device's
> resources!
>
> Our application lifecycle policies and state machines allow us to
> exercise this level of control for specific usage scenarios, but they
> do not touch on general multi-tasking capabilities and we can leverage
> the full process state spectrum to ensure a seamless operation.
>
>   Thomas
>
>  So can two or three applications run at the same time and other gets
> closed/suspended or can I switch between two applications only with
> reloading the application?
> We have a gesture to quick switch between apps, so if we have to reload
> apps while we are multitasking this gesture makes no sense. A good way
> would be suspending apps like Android does (/Greenify). The doesn't
> notice that and the battery life is good.
>
>
>
> --
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone
> Post to     : ubuntu-phone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>
>

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