ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Benjamin Zeller <benjamin.zeller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Yasmany,

first I want to thank you for your feedback on the Ubuntu-SDK, it's 
always good to hear from the
people out there using our products.

> Hello.
>
> First I apologize if what I will explain its because of my 
> misunderstanding or if did something wrong.
>
> I have at least 2 month trying to develop a native Facebook app. I 
> like Ubuntu phone proposal and I like the road that is set for it. So 
> I want to  contribute to it with something end users will love. I 
> always thought that native applications are much faster and nicest 
> than html5 apps or webapps like in this case for Facebook.
That is great to hear! We definitely need more native applications!
> So I follow the guides on the developers.ubuntu.com 
> <http://developers.ubuntu.com> and install the Ubuntu SDK or QTCreator 
> IDE then an emulator since I don't have a real phone. Here comes my 
> first struggle, there are so many channels and that multiplied by the 
> arch which should I use. First of all for starters developers I thing 
> that should be just a simple option and easy to start developing with 
> the latest and proposed options. Then we could have more customizable 
> options so experts can choose the options they want. Now about the 
> real issue that present to me, I create an emulator for the developer 
> channel using i386 arch since should be fastest that armhf but I end 
> up with an emulator with and old image and after that the SDK do not 
> recognize the device. So I start again this time choosing an stable 
> and this time I end up with a device looking like desktop. At the end 
> after a lot of trials I manage to create a device, nice lets move on.
Yes I agree, the options here are not optimal. Maybe it would be better 
to show a list of frameworks instead of the channels and as you said 
give more advanced users a way to type in the channel directly.
However you always should create a x86 emulator, it is indeed much 
faster than the armhf version.
As for the channels, the devel-proposed should always contain the most 
recent development version, you probably want to use that one for 
hacking. The channels named bq-stable and bq-rc are targeting the
BQ phone.
> I got to the options SDK section and select to create one for my arch 
> with the latest 15.04 version. With my slow connection this took at 
> least 5 tries since at least one package fails to download and the 
> whole chroot fails so I need to start again. This a real pain .. Is 
> really annoying how easily this can be broke. But finally it create 
> one. Great.
Yes the chroot boostrapping is still a problem, we are currently working 
on a solution to provide a single download that contains the complete 
chroot, so downloading can not fail in between the setup process.
My advice here is, always create the chroots/kits from the devices page. 
The devices page knows the frameworks of all your devices (emulators) 
and can automatically create the right version so you do not have to do 
things twice.
If you have a unreliable internet connection the single package download 
should make the situation better for you.
> So now I start my application to run on the device and what was my 
> surprise that the device image do not have the latest SDK 15.04 but 
> 14.10. Tier of trying I create another SDK target this time for the 
> 14.10 version and run my app again. This time to fail because the 
> components 1.2 its not available until 15.04.
You always should target the framework named after the most recent 
Ubuntu release, right now this is 15.04.
> Conclusions. It's really really hard to start developing and app with 
> so much tools to install and configure. If Ubuntu phone will have am 
> opportunity in the market its not just the OS but the collections of 
> good and common used apps like social networks that will attract end 
> users other wise Ubuntu phone will end up as same as on desktop just 
> for developers and enthusiast.
I Absolutely agree that the apps are a key point of success. The 
development story is already pretty solid when you have your own device, 
however the emulator part needs to be improved and we will
figure out a better naming for the channels, or maybe do a mapping there.
> Please let try to move the things in a better direction I really think 
> uphone has a great future if we aim at the right target.
We are working hard on improving the SDK and will take your feedback 
into account.
If you have more questions or need help you can reach me on IRC 
#ubuntu-app-devel nickname zbenjamin. There are many others there who
can give you instant help as well. But you can of course just write to 
that ML again and reply to that mail.


Benjamin