unity-api-bugs team mailing list archive

[Leo Arias <leo.arias@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm going to list the commons scenarios, a write what I think it's the
best solution for them after the initial discussions we have had.

- Run an application with a specific geometry to simulate a device
layout: run MIR or a MIR virtual frame buffer with that geometry and
then the app should maximize to that size.

- Run an application communicating with a server that's not production:
during the test set up, configure the test bed so it translates the
production domain name to an ip or domain we can control, like a staging
server of a fake server with hard-coded responses.

- Run an application with test double dependencies (like evernote
sandbox, in that it uses an account plugin that's not the same as the
production one): make a package for testing that uses the test
dependencies. We would have two apps, evernote and evernote-sandbox. The
will share almost all the code, only the deps are different.

If we ever need to pass an argument to an app, we could still write an
desktop file for it. So far, that doesn't seem like the right solution
in any case, but it's good we have the option. And anyway, that's the
only solution we can currently implement while all the others are
implemented.

This is still open for discussion of course. I'm just trying to make a
summary of today's discussion.

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You received this bug notification because you are a member of Unity API
bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu Application Launcher.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1367871

Title:
  ubuntu-app-launch doesn't pass arguments to the executable

Status in Autopilot:
  New
Status in Ubuntu Application Launcher:
  Won't Fix
Status in Ubuntu UI Toolkit:
  New

Bug description:
  Many applications currently use command line arguments to run in
  different modes. For example, we have reminders that receives -s to
  start using the sandbox, and some other arguments to decide the
  geometry of the app if it's being run on a platform that has a screen
  big enough.

  The problem is that when launching the app with ubuntu-app-launch
  reminders -s, that -s will be dropped. u-a-l will just execute the
  exec line on the desktop file. So if we need to launch evernote with
  the sandbox, we will need to write a different desktop file.

  I find it really useful to be able to launch applications with
  different modes by passing an argument. It makes it really simple to
  test the different modes on the same manual testing session. It also
  makes it simple to automate tests that require certain conditions, for
  example running the same tests twice on desktop, once in landscape
  mode and once in portrait mode; that way we will reduce the number of
  errors we find while running on the real hardware.

  We even have a handler for arguments on our API: http://developer.ubuntu.com/api/qml/sdk-14.10/Ubuntu.Components.Arguments/
  So it seems that we are encouraging the apps to use it. But then we are not able to launch them easily with those arguments.

  Ted thinks that UI apps shouldn't receive command line arguments, and
  that we should remove that from the API. (I'll ping Ted to comment on
  this bug so he talks for himself, I might have missed some details on
  this statement).

  Some alternatives are:
  - to write desktop files for each argument on the fly during automated tests.
  - to include desktop files for alternate modes on the click packages.
  - use environment variables instead of arguments.

  I'm reporting this bug so we can discuss about the best approach.

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