Welcome to the UBports documentation!¶
Welcome to the official documentation of the UBports project!
UBports develops the mobile phone operating system Ubuntu Touch. Ubuntu Touch is a mobile operating system focused on ease of use, privacy, and convergence.
On this website you find guides to install Ubuntu Touch on your mobile phone, use Ubuntu Touch, develop Ubuntu Touch apps, port Ubuntu Touch to an Android handset and learn more about system components. If this is your first time here, please consider reading our introduction.
If you want to help improving this documentation, the Documentation contribute page will get you started.
You may view this documentation in the following languages:
Introduction¶
Our goal is to create a copylefted libre mobile operating system. One you can use, study, change and share; with all.
About UBports¶
The project was founded by Marius Gripsgard in 2015 and in its infancy a place where developers could share ideas and educate each other in hopes of bringing the Ubuntu Touch platform to more mobile devices.
After Canonical suddenly announced plans to terminate support for Ubuntu Touch in April of 2017, UBports and its sister projects began work on the source code; maintaining and expanding its possibilities for the future. Today, UBports is a volunteer group, formalised as a charitable foundation.
About the Documentation¶
Changes to the documentation are made by the UBports community. It is written in reStructuredText and converted into this readable form by Sphinx, recommonmark, and Read the Docs. Start contributing by checking out the Documentation contribution document.
All documents are licensed Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 (CC-BY-SA 4.0). Please give attribution to “The UBports Community”.
Attribution¶
This documentation was heavily modeled after the Godot Engine’s Documentation, by Juan Linietsky, Ariel Manzur and the Godot community.
Processes¶
This section of the documentation details standardized processes for different teams.
Note
The process definitions are still a work in progress and need to be completed by the respective teams.
Issue-Tracking Guidelines¶
This document describes the standard process of dealing with new issues in UBports projects. (Not to be confused with the guide on writing a good bugreport.)
Where are bugs tracked?¶
Since quality assurance depends heavily on community effort, issues are tracked where users expect them, instead of separated by repository. This means issues of almost all distributed components (as with the system-image) are tracked in the Ubuntu Touch tracker. An exception to this are click-apps, which can be updated independently through the OpenStore.
Most other repositories track issues locally. You will find out whether a repository uses its own tracker or not in its README.md file. Repositories that don’t track issues locally have their bugtracker turned off.
This page is mainly about the Ubuntu Touch tracker, but most principles apply to other projects as well.
Note
Practical exceptions to purity are to be described in the project’s README.md file.
GitHub projects¶
In the interest of transparency and communication, GitHub projects (Kanban-Boards) are used wherever practical. In case of github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch, a single project is used for all issues. Projects support filtering by labels, so that only issues belonging to a specific team or ones affecting a specific device can be viewed.
These are the standard columns:
None (awaiting triage): Issue approved by a member of the QA team awaiting review from the responsible development team. If a bug, instructions to reproduce are included in the issue description. If a feature request, it has passed a primary sanity check by the QA team, but not yet been accepted by the responsible development-team.
Accepted: Issue accepted by the responsible development-team. If a bugreport, the team has decided it should be fixable and accept responsibility. If a feature request, the team thinks it should be implemented as described.
In Development: A patch in development. Usually means a developer is assigned to the issue.
Quality Assurance: A completed patch passing initial testing. The QA team will review it and provide feedback. If problems are found, the issue is moved back to “Accepted”.
Release Candidate: A patch passing QA, ready for release. In case of DEB packages included in the system-image, the patch will be included in the next over-the-air update on the rc channel, and (provided everything goes well) in the next release of the stable channel.
None (removed from the project): Open issue labeled “help wanted”. Community contributions are required to resolve it. If it’s closed, either a patch has been released on the stable channel (a comment on the issue should link to the patch) or the issue is rejected (labeled “wontfix”).
Labels¶
All issues — even closed ones — should be labeled to allow use of GitHub’s global filtering. For example, these are all of the issues labeled ‘enhancement’ inside @ubports. Consult the GitHub help pages to learn more about searching and filtering.
List of labels normally used by all repositories:
needs confirmation: The bug needs confirmation and / or further detailing by affected users.
bug: This issue is a confirmed bug. If it’s reproducible, reproduction steps are described.
opinion: This issue needs further discussion.
enhancement: This issue is a feature request.
question: This issue is a support request or general question.
invalid: This issue can not be confirmed or was reported in the wrong tracker.
duplicate: This has already been reported elsewhere. Please provide a link and close.
help wanted: This issue is ready to be picked up by a community developer.
good first issue: The report contains instructions or hints required to fix it. It is an excellent place for someone new to learn about the project by fixing a real issue.
wontfix: A bug it does not make sense to fix, since it will probably resolve itself, be too much work, isn’t fixable, or an underlying component will soon change.
Additional special labels can be defined. As an example, these are the labels used in the Ubuntu Touch tracker:
critical (devel): Critical issue only occuring on the devel channel is blocking the release of the next rc image.
critical (rc): Critical issue only occuring on the devel and rc channel is blocking the release of the next stable release. Usually, issues that can not simply be moved to a different release and have the power to postpone the release are labeled this way.
device: [DEVICE CODENAME]: Issue affecting only the specified device(s).
team: [TEAM NAME]: Issue falls under the responsibility of a specific team (HAL, middleware, UI).
Note
If a repository tracking issues locally defines it’s own labels, they should be documented in the README.md.
Milestones¶
Milestones are used for stable OTA releases only. In general, milestones for the work-in-progress OTA and the next OTA are created. The ETA is set once the work on the release starts (that is 6 weeks from start date), but can be adjusted afterwards. Learn more in release-schedule.
Assignees¶
To make it transparent who’s working on an issue, the developer should be assigned. This also allows the use of GitHub’s global filtering as a type of TODO list. For example, this is everything assigned to mariogrip in @ubports.
Developers are encouraged to keep their list short and update the status of their issues.
Examples¶
Bug Lifecycle¶
Note
The same principle applies to feature requests, only they are labeled enhancement instead of bug. needs confirmation is not applicable for feature requests.
A user files a new bug using the issue-template.
The QA-Team labels it needs confirmation and tries to work with the user to confirm the bug and add potentially missing info to the report.
Once the report is complete a team-label is added to the issue, the issue will be put on the awaiting-triage-list of the project and the label needs confirmation will be replaced with bug.
The affected Team triages the issue and either rejects (label wontfix, closes and removes from the project) or accepts the issue.
The team decides whether to fix the issue in-house (move to “Accepted” and assign a team member) or wait for a community developer to pick it up (by labeling it help wanted, removing it from the project board and providing hints on how to resolve the issue and further details on how the fix should be implemented if necessary). For non-critical issues trivial to fix, the label good first issue can be added as well.
Once a developer is assigned and starts working on the issue, it is moved to “In Development”.
As soon as there is something to show for, the issue is closed and automatically moved to “Quality Assurance” for feedback from the QA team. If necessary, the developer provides hints on how to test the patch in a comment on the issue.
The QA-Team tests the fix on all devices and provides feedback to the developer. If problems are found, the issue is re-opened and goes back to “Accepted”, otherwise it is moved to “Release Candidate” for inclusion in the next release.
If not done already, the issue is added to the next milestone, which once released removes the issue from the project board.
Release Schedule¶
OTA updates usually follow this rhythm:
devel: daily builds
rc: weekly if no critical issue exists in the devel channel
stable: every six through eight weeks, if no critical issue exists in the rc channel
This is not a definitive cycle. Stable releases are ready when they’re ready and should not introduce new bugs or ship very incomplete features. Since the OTA update can not be released before all critical issues are closed, the ETA might have to be moved by making an educated guess for when all the issues can be handled. If there are too many issues added to a milestone, they are either removed or added to the next milestone.
repo.ubports.com¶
This is the package archive system for UBports projects. It hosts various PPAs containing all the DEB-components of Ubuntu Touch.
Repository naming convention¶
Native packages¶
Native packages (like https://github.com/ubports/system-settings) are repositories that contain a debian/ folder with the source used to create the DEB source package (.dsc).
The name of the Debian source package generated from the repository and the name of the Git-repository should be the same.
Packaging repositories¶
Packaging repositories (like https://github.com/ubports/pulseaudio-packaging) contain a debian folder without the source used to create the Debian source package (.dsc).
They also contain instructions to tell debhelper how to get the sources used to create the source package.
The repository should have the name of the source package it generates with -packaging appended to the end.
For example, a packaging repository that generates a source package called sandwich would be called sandwich-packaging.
Creating new PPAs¶
New PPAs can be created dynamically by the CI server using a special git-branch naming convention. The name of the branch translates literally to the name of the PPA: https://repo.ubports.com/dists/[branch name]
Non-standard PPAs (i.e. not vivid, xenial, or bionic) are kept for three months.
If they need to be kept for longer, a file with the name ubports.keep containing a date in the form of in the form of YYYY-MM-dd can be used to decide how long to keep the PPA in the repository for.
If this file is empty, the PPA will be kept for two years after the last build.
Branch-naming convention¶
Our branch-naming convention ensures software can be built by our CI and tested easily by other developers.
Every Git repository’s README file should state which branch-naming convention is used and any deviations from the norm.
Click-Packages¶
Software exclusively distributed as a click-package (and not also as a DEB) only uses one master branch that is protected. Separate temporary development branches with arbitrary descriptive names can be created and merged into master when the time comes. Ideally Git tags or GitHub releases should be used to mark and archive milestones in the development history.
DEB Packages¶
To make most efficient use of our CI system, a special naming convention for Git branches is used.
For pre-installed Ubuntu Touch components, DEB-packages are used wherever possible. This includes Core apps, since they can still be independently updated using click-package downloads from the OpenStore. This policy allows making use of the powerful Debian build-system to resolve dependencies.
Every repository using this convention will have branches for the actively supported Ubuntu releases referenced by their codenames (bionic, xenial, vivid, etc.). These are the branches built directly into the corresponding images and published on repo.ubports.com. If no separate versions for the different Ubuntu bases are needed, the repository will have one master branch and the CI system will still build versions for all actively supported releases and resolve dependencies accordingly.
Branch-extensions¶
To build and publish packages based on another repository, an extension in the form of xenial_-_some-descriptive_extension can be used. The CI system will then resolve all dependencies using the xenial_-_some-descriptive_extension branch of other repositories or fall back to using the normal xenial dependencies, if it doesn’t exist. These special dependencies are not built into the image, but still pushed to repo.ubports.com.
Multiple branch extensions can be chained together in the form of xenial_-_dependency-1_-_dependency-2_-_dependency-3. This means the CI system will look for dependencies in the following repositories:
xenial
xenial_-_dependency-1
xenial_-_dependency-1_-_dependency-2
xenial_-_dependency-1_-_dependency-2_-_dependency-3
Note
There is no prioritization, so the build system will always use the package with the highest version number, or the newest build if the version is equal.
Dependency-file¶
For complex or non-linear dependencies, a ubports.depends file can be created in the root of the repository to specify additional dependencies. The branch name will be ignored if this file exists.
xenial
xenial_-_dependency-1_-_dependency-2_-_dependency-3
xenial_-_something-else
Note
The ubports.depends file is an exclusive list, so the build system will not resolve dependencies linearly like it does in a branch name! Every dependency has to be listed. You will almost always want to include your base release (i.e. xenial).
Install Ubuntu Touch¶
Installing Ubuntu Touch is easy, and a lot of work has gone in to making the installation process less intimidating to the average user. The UBports Installer is a nice graphical tool that you can use to install Ubuntu Touch on a supported device from your Linux, Mac or Windows computer. For more experienced users, we also have manual installation instructions for every device on the devices page.
Warning
If you’re switching your device over from Android, you will not be able to keep any data that is currently on the device. Create an external backup if you want to keep it.
You can Download the UBports Installer from GitHub. The following packages are available:
Windows:
ubports-installer-<version-number>.exemacOS:
ubports-installer-<version-number>.dmgUbuntu or Debian:
ubports-installer-<version-number>.debOther Linux distributions (snap):
ubports-installer-<version-number>.snapOther Linux distributions (AppImage):
ubports-installer-<version-number>.AppImage
Start the installer and follow the on-screen instructions that will walk you through the installation process. That’s it! Have fun exploring Ubuntu Touch!
If you’re an experienced android developer and want to help us bring Ubuntu Touch to more devices, visit the porting section.
Note
Please do not start the installer with sudo. It is meant to be run as a normal user, not as root. Using the installer with sudo will mess up permissions in the installer’s cached files and lead to problems down the road. If the installer does not recognize your device, check the troubleshooting information below.
Troubleshooting¶
If you need help, you can join UBports’ support channels on telegram or matrix or ask a question in the forum or on askubuntu. If you believe that the UBports Installer is not working correctly, you can also file a new issue to help us solve the problem.
Connection lost during installation¶
Try a different USB cable and a different USB port on your computer. Cheap and old cables tend to lose connection during the installation.
Windows Defender prevents Installer from starting¶
We have contacted Microsoft about this problem, but they seem to think it’s enjoyable. To dismiss the warning, click on “More Information”, then select “Run anyway”.
Device not detected¶
Virtual Machine¶
If you’re running the installer in a virtual machine, make sure the virtual machine is allowed to access the USB port.
Windows ADB drivers¶
Install the universal adb driver and reboot your computer.
Fairphone 2 Vendor-ID¶
Run echo 0x2ae5 >> ~/.android/adb_usb.ini in the terminal and restart the installer. This does not affect the snap package.
Missing udev-rules¶
If the device is not detected on Linux and you are not using the snap package, then you might be missing some udev-rules.
See if
/etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rulesexists and contains the rules below. If not, add them to the file and runsudo service udev restartorsudo udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger.
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0e79", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0502", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0b05", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="413c", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0489", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="091e", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="18d1", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="12d1", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="24e3", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2116", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0482", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="17ef", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1004", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="22b8", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0409", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2080", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0955", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2257", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="10a9", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1d4d", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0471", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="04da", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="05c6", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1f53", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="04e8", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="04dd", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0fce", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0930", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="19d2", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2ae5", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2a45", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"
Other issues¶
If the troubleshooting tips do not work, you might also try following the manual installation instructions for your device on the devices page.
Install on legacy Android devices¶
While the installation process is fairly simple on most devices, some legacy Bq and Meizu devices require special steps. This part of the guide does not apply to other devices.
Note
This is more or less uncharted territory. If your device’s manufacturer does not want you to install an alternative operating system, there’s not a lot we can do about it. The instructions below should only be followed by experienced users. While we appreciate that lots of people want to use our OS, flashing a device with OEM tools shouldn’t be done without a bit of know-how and plenty of research.
Meizu devices are pretty much stuck on Flyme. While the MX4 can be flashed successfully in some cases, the Pro5 is Exynos-based and has its own headaches.
Warning
BE VERY CAREFUL! You are responsible for your own actions!
Disconnect all devices and non-essential peripherals from your PC. Charge your device on a wall-charger (not your PC) to at least 40 percent.
Download the Ubuntu Touch ROM for your device and extract the zip files:
Bq E4.5 (krillin)
Bq E5 HD (vegetahd)
Bq M10 HD (cooler)
Bq M10 FHD (frieza)
Meizu MX4 (arale)
Download the latest version of SP flash tool (aka MTK flash tool).
Extract the zip files
Open a Terminal, enter the SP flash tool directory and run it with
sudo ./flash_tool.sh.
Note
On Ubuntu 17.10, there are issues with flash_tool loading the shared library ‘libpng12’, so this can be used as a workaround:
wget -q -O /tmp/libpng12.deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/libp/libpng/libpng12-0_1.2.54-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb \
&& sudo dpkg -i /tmp/libpng12.deb \
&& rm /tmp/libpng12.deb
In the “Scatter-loading File” section, press the “choose” button and select the
*Android_scatter.txtfile from the archive you downloaded in the second step.Choose “Firmware Upgrade” from the drop-down menu.
Warning
If you select DOWNLOAD ONLY rather than FIRMWARE UPGRADE, you will end up with a useless brick rather than a fancy Ubuntu Touch device. Be sure to select FIRMWARE UPGRADE.
Also, after selecting the *Android_scatter.txt, the drop-down menu choice is reset to DOWNLOAD ONLY. Be sure to select it after selecting the file.
Turn your device completely off, but do not connect it yet.
Press the button labeled “Download”.
Perform a final sanity-check that you selected the “Firmware Upgrade” option, not “Download Only”.
Make sure your device is off and connect it to your PC. Don’t use a USB 3.0 port, since that’s known to cause communication issues with your device.
Magic happens. Wait till all the progress bars ended.
Note
If the installation fails with a 100% red bar and hangs there (and logs says something like COM port is open. Trying to sync with the target...), remove the modemmanager package as the one installed is not compatible with SP flash tool, close it and try again from step 4.
Congratulations! Your device will now boot into a super old version of Ubuntu Touch. You can now use the UBports Installer to install an updated version.
Daily use¶
This section of the documentation details common tasks users may want to do on their Ubuntu Touch device.
Using location services¶
Location services in Ubuntu Touch allow apps to access your current location. Using this data, apps can offer turn-by-turn navigation, track your exercise paths, locate public transport near you, and more.
The location services built into Ubuntu Touch are designed to protect your privacy — you choose to permit or deny apps access to this data. Apps may only access your location data when the device screen is on and the app is in use.
Checking if location services are on¶
The Location Indicator is displayed whenever location services are on. Normally, this indicator will appear to be dark.
The Location Indicator, showing location on but not in use.¶
If an app is accessing location data, the Location Indicator brightens.
The Location Indicator, showing location on and in use.¶
Accessing location services settings¶
There are several ways to access settings related to location services in Ubuntu Touch.
Open location quick settings¶
The Location Indicator contains quick settings related to location services, including a switch to turn services on or off.
To access these settings, press the Location Indicator and pull down toward the bottom of the screen.
If location services are off, you can access the location quick settings by pressing on any other indicator and pulling down. Then, scroll through the icons at the top of the screen to find Location. Select “Location to open the quick settings.
Open location settings in the settings app¶
The system settings app can be used to control location services. There are more controls in the system settings app than in the Location Indicator.
There are two ways to access location services controls in the system settings app.
Quick settings¶
Open location quick settings, then select Location settings....
System settings app¶
Launch the System Settings app. Select Security & Privacy, then select Location.
Enabling or disabling location services¶
If location services are on, apps you have granted access to your location data may request your current location. Location services are on by default on Ubuntu Touch.
If location services are off, apps will not be able to access your current location.
There are several ways to turn on or off location services in Ubuntu Touch.
Quick settings¶
Open location quick settings.
Select the Location detection switch to turn on or off location services.
System settings app¶
Open location settings in the settings app.
Under Let the device detect your location:, select the appropriate option:
Using GPSturns on location services.Not at allturns off location services.
Allowing apps access to location data¶
Ubuntu Touch allows you to allow or deny apps access to your location data. This decision is presented the first time the app tries to access your current location. You can change your decision later.
An app will show the location permission request the first time it tries to access your current location.
Select Allow to give the app access to your current location.
Select Don't Allow to deny the app access to your current location.
Some app features may not work correctly if you select Don't Allow.
Changing your permissions¶
You can change your decision to allow an app access to your location data. This is useful if you have granted an app access to your location but would now like to revoke it, or if you denied access but would like to grant access again.
There are several ways to find these controls.
Location settings¶
Open location settings in the settings app.
All apps that have requested access to your location are listed under Let apps access this location:.
Toggle the switch next to an app “on” to allow it to access your location data.
Toggle the switch “off” to deny access.
App permission settings¶
Launch the System Settings app.
Select Security & Privacy, then select App permissions, followed by Location.
All of the apps that have requested access to your location are listed.
Toggle the switch next to an app “on” to allow it to access your location data.
Toggle the switch “off” to deny access.
Using apps with location services¶
Apps will be able to access your current location after they are granted access to location data. However, there are some things to note while using apps with location services.
Time to first fix¶
A “fix” is a data point generated by GPS hardware that contains its current location and the expected accuracy of that location. GPS hardware is rated by how long it takes to return one of these data points after the device is activated. This rating is called “Time To First Fix,” or TTFF.
A device with a mobile data connection should take one to four minutes to receive its first fix. If location services have not been used for a long time and the device does not have a mobile data connection, the first fix can take up to an hour. To prevent this from causing problems for you, follow these instructions:
Warning
Do not leave your device in direct sunlight. (The heat can damage the device.)
Turn off
Lock when idlein the Battery settingsDownload an app which uses location services and use it to start accessing location data.
Leave your device near a window, but out of direct sunlight.
(Turn the screen brightness down to reduce energy consumption.)
After 20-60 minutes, your device should display your current location.
You can now close the app and turn on Lock when idle.
Future attempts to aquire your location should now take 1-4 minutes.
App suspension¶
Apps are suspended whenever not in the foreground, or when the device is locked. When an app is suspended, it cannot receive location data. For this reason, apps will not be able to track your location whenever they are not in use or the device is locked.
Run desktop applications¶
Libertine allows you to use standard desktop applications in Ubuntu Touch.
To install applications you can use the Settings interface on your Ubuntu Touch device, or the command-line as described further below.
Manage containers¶
Create a container¶
The first step is to create a container where applications can be installed:
Open Settings and scroll down to Libertine under the System sub-heading.
Tap Libertine to get to the Manage Libertine Containers sub-menu. Already installed containers will be visible here. Tap the + sign at the upper right to add a container.
The Container Options dialog box will open asking you to enter a container name and optionally a password. Confirm your entries by tapping “OK”, and the container will be created.
To do this via the command-line:
libertine-container-manager create -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER
You can add extra options such as:
-n namename is a more user-friendly name of the container
-t typetype can be eitherchrootorlxc. The default ischroot, which is compatible with every device.If the kernel of your device supports it,
lxcis suggested.
Creation can take a while due to the size of the container (some hundred megabytes).
Note
The create command shown above cannot be run directly in the terminal app, due to AppArmor restrictions.
You can run it from another device using either an ADB or SSH connection.
Alternatively, you can run it from the terminal app using a loopback SSH connection by running this command: ssh localhost.
List containers¶
Use the Settings Manage Libertine Containers sub-menu to list all the containers you have created on the device.
You can also use the command-line. Run:
libertine-container-manager list
Destroy a container¶
libertine-container-manager destroy -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER
Manage applications¶
Once a container is set up, the installed applications are available in the app drawer. You can also tap the name of the container in the Manage Libertine Containers menu.
You can also list them via the command-line:
libertine-container-manager list-apps
Install a package¶
From the apps list in the Manage Libertine Containers menu you can tap the + sign to get a dialog box that lets you add a package.
Enter the package name if you know it. Otherwise you can search the archives for a package. You can make this process easier by making the Lubuntu Software Center your first package install. Being a desktop app, you will need to use the Libertine Tweak Tool in the Open Store to make the text large enough to read on a mobile device.
Packages may also be installed via the command-line:
libertine-container-manager install-package -p PACKAGE-NAME
Remove a package¶
Remove a package by swiping it to the right from its entry in the package list (in System Settings > Libertine > Manage Libertine Containers > CONTAINER NAME). An option to remove it will be revealed.
Or you can remove the package via the command-line:
libertine-container-manager remove-package -p PACKAGE-NAME
Note
If you have more than one container, you can use the option -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER to specify which container you want to perform an operation on.
Run desktop application¶
Run it from the app menu like any other app. To start a graphical app from the command-line, for example gedit, run this in a terminal:
# ubuntu-app-launch <CONTAINER_ID>_<desktop_file_name>_0.0
ubuntu-app-launch xenial_gedit_0.0
Files¶
Libertine applications have access to these folders:
Documents
Music
Pictures
Downloads
Videos
Tips¶
Locations¶
For every container you create, two directories will be created:
A root directory
~/.cache/libertine-container/CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER/rootfs/anda user directory
~/.local/share/libertine-container/user-data/CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER/
Shell access¶
There are two options for executing commands inside the container.
The first option is based on libertine-container-manager exec.
It lets you run your commands as root. The drawback is that the container is not completely set up.
So far we know that the folders mentioned above (Documents, Music, …) are not mounted i.e., the /home/phablet/ directory is empty.
Likewise the directory referenced in TMPDIR is not available, which may lead to problems with software trying to create temporary files or directories.
You may use this option to installing packages.
To execute a command you can use the following pattern:
libertine-container-manager exec -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER -c "COMMAND-LINE"
For example, run:
libertine-container-manager exec -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER -c "apt-get --help"
To get a shell into your container as root, run:
libertine-container-manager exec -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER -c "/bin/bash"
The second option is based on libertine-launch.
It will execute your commands as user phablet in a completely set up container.
You may use this option to modify your files using installed packages.
To execute a command you can use the following pattern:
libertine-launch -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER COMMAND-LINE
For example, run:
libertine-launch -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER ls -a
To get a shell as the user phablet, run:
DISPLAY= libertine-launch -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER /bin/bash
Note
When you launch Bash in this way you will not get any specific feedback to confirm being inside the container.
You can check ls / to confirm for yourself you are actually inside the container.
The listing of ls / will be different inside and outside the container.
Accessing SD card¶
To access your SD-card or any other part of the regular filesystem from inside your Libertine container you must create a bind mount.
To add a bind mount, use:
libertine-container-manager configure -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER -b add -p /media/phablet/ID-OF-SD
You can also make deep links if you only want parts of your SD-card available in the container. In this case just add the entire path to the directory you want to bind mount:
libertine-container-manager configure -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER -b add -p /media/phablet/ID-OF-SD/directory/you/want
This will not give the container access to any of the directories earlier in the path for anything other than accessing your mounted directory.
In order to use the SD card as extra space for your container, make sure to first format it using ext4 or similar. There is a mis-feature in UDisks2 that mounts SD-cards (showexec), ensuring only files ending in .bat, .exe or .com can be executed from the drive if it is (V)FAT formatted. This has been changed in other distributions, allowing any file to have execute priviliges, but not in Ubuntu. The recommended workaround is to add a udev rule to control how to mount a card with a given ID, but since the udev rules are on the read-only port on Ubuntu Touch, this is not possible.
Shortcuts¶
If you want, you can add aliases for command-line tools.
Add lines like the following ones to your ~/.bash_aliases:
alias git='libertine-launch -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER git'
alias screenfetch='libertine-launch -i CONTAINER-IDENTIFIER screenfetch'
Background¶
A display server coordinates input and output of an operating system. Ubuntu Touch does not use X, but a new display server called Mir. This means standard X applications are not directly compatible with Ubuntu Touch. A compatibility layer called XMir resolves this. Libertine relies on XMir to display desktop applications.
Another challenge is that Ubuntu Touch system updates are released as OTA images. As a consequence of this the root filesystem is read-only. Libertine provides a container with a read-write filesystem to allow installation of regular Linux desktop applications.
Android apps¶
Anbox is a minimal Android container and compatibility layer to run Android apps on GNU/Linux operating systems such as Ubuntu Touch.
Note
“Computer” refers to another device you connect your Ubuntu Touch device to (via USB here).
Your USB-attached computer must have adb and fastboot installed.
Note
You will need to execute commands on your Ubuntu Touch device (and/or attached computer) to install Anbox and APKs.
You can do that by using the terminal application, but it is easier to use adb shell or set up SSH to access your Ubuntu Touch device from your computer.
Supported devices¶
Make sure your device is supported:
Meizu PRO 5
Fairphone 2
OnePlus One
Nexus 5
BQ Aquaris M10 HD
BQ Aquaris M10 FHD
How to install¶
Warning
Installing Anbox is only recommended for experienced users.
Install Anbox kernel¶
Some devices require you to install a custom Linux kernel to use Anbox. These devices are:
Meizu PRO 5 (codename:
turbo, name of the boot partition:bootimg)BQ Aquaris M10 HD (codename:
cooler, name of the boot partition:boot)BQ Aquaris M10 FHD (codename:
frieza, name of the boot partition:boot)
If your device is not in this list, the Anbox kernel was automatically installed when you installed Ubuntu Touch. Please skip ahead to Run the Anbox installer.
You will need to repeat these steps after each Ubuntu Touch update. Not doing so can put your Ubuntu Touch device into an unstable state. Only update your Ubuntu Touch device when you have a computer with you to re-flash the modified kernel image.
Be sure to have a backup of your device.
Open a terminal on your computer and set some device specific variables by running
export CODENAME="turbo" && export PARTITIONNAME="bootimg", but replace the part between the quotes respectively with the codename and name of the boot partition for your device. See the above list.Activate Developer mode on your device.
Connect the device to your computer and run the following commands from your computer (the same terminal you ran the
exportcommand):wget https://cdimage.ubports.com/anbox-images/anbox-boot-$CODENAME.img adb shell # connect from your computer to your Ubuntu Touch device sudo reboot -f bootloader # 'adb shell' will exit after this command, the prompt will be back on your computer sudo fastboot flash $PARTITIONNAME anbox-boot-$CODENAME.img sudo fastboot reboot rm anbox-boot-$CODENAME.img exit
Run the Anbox installer¶
Once your device has the Anbox kernel installed, you can use the Anbox Tool to install the Anbox container.
Run
adb shellfrom your computer to get a shell on your Ubuntu Touch device.Run the following command on your Ubuntu Touch device:
anbox-tool install.Follow the on-screen instructions.
Now you’re done! You might have to refresh the app drawer (pull down from the center of the screen and release) for the new Android apps to show up.
Note
You now have an ADB server running on your Ubuntu Touch device.
This guide asks you to run some ADB commands, sometimes on your computer, other times on the device itself. Carefully check which device you are on!
You can check that the ADB server is running on your Ubuntu Touch device by entering adb devices in its terminal app.
You should see something like:
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ adb devices
List of devices attached
emulator-5558 device
How to install new APKs¶
Copy the APK to
/home/phablet/Downloads. Then run the following from your computer:adb shell # connect from your computer to your Ubuntu Touch device adb install /home/phablet/Downloads/my-app.apk # This is the adb of your device, not your computer exit
Done! You might have to refresh the apps scope (pull down from the center of the screen and release) for the new Android apps to show up.
Keep your apps up to date¶
To keep your apps up to date you can use of F-Droid or ApkTrack. If you want to install any of the above apps you can find them here:
F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/
ApkTrack: https://f-droid.org/packages/fr.kwiatkowski.ApkTrack/
How to uninstall apps¶
To uninstall apps from the Ubuntu Touch device, run
adb uninstall [APP_ID]from your computer:adb shell # connect from your computer to your Ubuntu Touch device sudo mount -o rw,remount / adb uninstall [APP_ID] # This is the adb of your device, not your computer exit
Done! You might have to pull down from the app list for the new Android apps to show up.
Access Android storage¶
The Android storage is located at /home/phablet/anbox-data/data/media/0.
Links to android libraries can be made in their respective XDG counterparts:
ln -s ~/anbox-data/data/media/0/Documents ~/Documents/android ln -s ~/anbox-data/data/media/0/Pictures ~/Pictures/android ln -s ~/anbox-data/data/media/0/Music ~/Music/android ln -s ~/anbox-data/data/media/0/Movies ~/Videos/android
Troubleshooting¶
When you want to install an APK, but get the error
Invalid APK filethat error could also mean “file not found”Check that you typed the filename correctly.
If the APK does not reside in the folder you are in when you run adb, you have to specify the full path, e.g.
/home/phablet/Downloads/my-app.apkinstead of justmy-app.apk
Reporting bugs¶
Please report any bugs you come across. Bugs concerning Ubuntu Touch are reported in the normal Ubuntu Touch tracker and issues with Anbox are reported on our downstream fork. Thank you!
Advanced use¶
In this section you will find advanced tasks power users can perform on their Ubuntu Touch devices.
Note
Some of these guides involve making your system image writable, which may break OTA updates. The guides may also reduce the overall security of your Ubuntu Touch device. Please consider ramifications beforehand.
Shell access via ADB¶
You can put your UBports device into developer mode and access a Bash shell from your PC. This is useful for debugging or more advanced shell usage.
Install ADB¶
First, you’ll need ADB installed on your computer.
On Ubuntu:
sudo apt install android-tools-adb
On Fedora:
sudo dnf install android-tools
And on macOS with Homebrew:
brew install android-platform-tools
For Windows, grab the command-line tools only package from developer.android.com.
Enable developer mode¶
Next, you’ll need to turn on Developer Mode.
Reboot your device
Place your device into developer mode (Settings - About - Developer Mode - check the box to turn it on)
Plug the device into a computer with ADB installed
Open a terminal and run
adb devices.
Note
When you’re done using the shell, it’s a good idea to turn Developer Mode off again.
If there’s a device in the list here (The command doesn’t print “List of devices attached” and a blank line), you are able to use ADB. If not, continue to the next section.
ADB shell commands:
adb shell — Gives you access to the Linux command-line shell on your device.
adb shell [command] — Runs the specified shell command on your device.
Additional Adb commands:
adb push [source] [destination] — Pushes a file from your computer to your device.
adb pull [destination] [source] — Pulls a file from your device to your computer.
For more ADB commands, refer to the official documentation.
Add hardware IDs¶
ADB doesn’t always know what devices on your computer it should or should not talk to. You can manually add the devices that it does not know how to talk to.
Just run the command for your selected device if it’s below. Then, run adb kill-server followed by the command you were initially trying to run.
Fairphone 2:
printf "0x2ae5 \n" >> ~/.android/adb_usb.ini
OnePlus One:
printf "0x9d17 \n" >> ~/.android/adb_usb.ini
Shell access via SSH¶
You can use SSH to access a shell from your PC. This is useful for debugging or more advanced shell usage.
You need a SSH key-pair for this. Logging in via password is disabled by default.
Create your public key¶
If not already created, create your public key. Default choices should be fine for LAN. You can leave empty password if you don’t want to deal with it each time:
ssh-keygen
Copy the public key to your device¶
You need then to transfer your public key to your device. There are multiple ways to do this. These are a few options:
Connect the UBports device and the PC with a USB cable. Then copy the file using your file-manager.
Or, transfer the key via the Internet by e-mailing it to yourself, or uploading it to your own cloud storage, web-server, etc.
You can also connect via adb and use the following command to copy it (Some devices cant support ADB, check the devices page to learn more.):
adb push ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub /home/phablet/
Configure your device¶
Now you have the public key on the UBports device.
Let’s assume it’s stored as /home/phablet/id_rsa.pub. Use the terminal app or an ADB connection to perform the following steps on your device.
mkdir /home/phablet/.ssh
chmod 700 /home/phablet/.ssh
cat /home/phablet/id_rsa.pub >> /home/phablet/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 /home/phablet/.ssh/authorized_keys
chown -R phablet:phablet /home/phablet/.ssh
Now start the SSH server. If you are using an Android-based device:
sudo android-gadget-service enable ssh
If you are using a Linux-based device (like the PinePhone):
sudo service ssh start
Connect¶
Now everything is set up and you can use ssh
ssh phablet@ubuntu-phablet
or, if that does not work
ssh phablet@<ip-address>
To identify the IP-address of your UBports device, open the Terminal app on your device and run the following command:
hostname -I
The output is a list of IP addresses separated by spaces. Use the IP address that matches your subnet. On your PC or laptop:
debian2:~/$ hostname -I
192.168.42.41 2001:982:89e9:1:bc6b:758:7ba2:c190
On the phone:
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ hostname -I
10.55.74.177 192.168.42.52 2001:982:89e9:1:ef68:5f7c:3db4:c0d3
In this case you use the second IP address
Of course you can now also use scp or sshfs to transfer files.
References¶
Switch release channels¶
You can change the release channel using the system settings. The 3 existing channels are stable, rc (release candidate) and devel (nightly builds). More info in the release schedule.
Screencasting your Ubuntu touch device to your computer¶
The bundled mirscreencast command-line utility dumps screen-frames to a file.
Use it to stream your Ubuntu Touch display to a computer over the network (or directly through ADB) to watch it live or record it to a file.
Using ADB¶
You can catch output directly from the adb exec-out command and forward it to MPlayer:
adb exec-out timeout 120 mirscreencast -m /run/mir_socket --stdout --cap-interval 2 -s 384 640 | mplayer -demuxer rawvideo -rawvideo w=384:h=640:format=rgba -
timeout above is used to kill the process in a proper manner on the Ubuntu Touch device (120 seconds here).
(Otherwise the process continues even if killed on the computer.)
Reduce or increase the number of frames per second with``–cap-interval`` (1 = 60fps, 2=30fps, …)
and the size of frames 384 640 means a width of 384 px and a height of 640 px.
Via the network¶
On the receiver¶
For real-time casting:
Prepare your computer to listen to a TCP port (1234 here) and forward the raw stream to a video player (MPlayer here) with a framesize of 384x640:
nc -l -p 1234 | gzip -dc | mplayer -demuxer rawvideo -rawvideo w=384:h=640:format=rgba -
For stream recording:
Prepare your computer to listen to a TCP port (1234 here), unpack and forward the raw stream to a video encoder (MEncoder here):
nc -l -p 1234 | gzip -dc | mencoder -demuxer rawvideo -rawvideo fps=60:w=384:h=640:format=rgba -ovc x264 -o out.avi -
On the Ubuntu Touch device¶
Forward and gzip the stream with 60 FPS (–cap-interval 1) and a framesize of 384x640 to the computer at 10.42.0.209 on port 1234:
mirscreencast -m /run/mir_socket --stdout --cap-interval 1 -s 384 640 | gzip -c | nc 10.42.0.209 1234
Example script¶
Run this on a computer (with MPlayer installed and SSH access to the Ubuntu Touch device) to screencast a remote Ubuntu Touch device to it.:
#!/bin/bash
SCREEN_WIDTH=384
SCREEN_HEIGHT=640
PORT=1234
FORMAT=rgba
if [[ $# -eq 0 ]] ; then
echo 'usage: ./mircast.sh UT_IP_ADDRESS , e.g: ./mircast.sh 192.168.1.68'
exit 1
fi
IP=$1
LOCAL_COMMAND='nc -l -p $PORT | gzip -dc | mplayer -demuxer rawvideo -rawvideo w=$SCREEN_WIDTH:h=$SCREEN_HEIGHT:format=$FORMAT -'
REMOTE_COMMAND="mirscreencast -m /run/mir_socket --stdout --cap-interval 1 -s $SCREEN_WIDTH $SCREEN_HEIGHT | gzip -c | nc \$SSH_CLIENT $PORT"
ssh -f phablet@$IP "$REMOTE_COMMAND"
eval $LOCAL_COMMAND
You can download it here: files/mircast.sh
References¶
Initial source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/ScreenRecording
Reverse tethering¶
This tutorial helps you to connect your Ubuntu Touch device to your computer to access the Internet on it. This is useful if there is no available Wi-Fi connection or you don’t have a data subscription on your Ubuntu Touch device.
Prerequisite: A Ubuntu Touch device with “Developer mode” on, attached via USB to the computer connected to the Internet.
Steps¶
On the Ubuntu Touch device:
android-gadget-service enable rndisOn your computer: get your RNDIS IP address e.g:
hostname -IOn the Ubuntu Touch device:
add a gateway:
sudo route add default gw YOUR_COMPUTER_RNDIS_IPadd nameservers:
echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" | sudo tee /etc/resolv.confrefresh the DNS table:
resolvconf -uOn computer:
Turn on IP forwarding:
echo 1 | sudo tee /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forwardApply NAT:
sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.0.0.0/8 -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
References¶
CalDAV and CardDAV syncing¶
CalDAV and CardDAV are protocols to sync calendars and contacts with a remote server. Many e-mail hosters provide a CalDAV and CardDAV interface.
Note: CalDAV sync can also be set up by using the calendar app. Open it, click on the little calendar icon in the top right corner and select “Add internet calendar > Generic CalDAV”. Enter your calendar URL as well as your username and password to complete the process.
At the moment, the Ubuntu Touch graphical user-interface lacks a CardDAV implementation, but you can do it by using SyncEvolution + cron. There is a script you can run in the terminal, or via a phablet SSH connection. These instructions work for CalDAV as well.
Follow this guide to activate Developer Mode and a connection either through ADB or SSH.
Download this script (let’s call it dav.sh) and edit the following variables:
Server side: CAL_URL, CONTACTS_URL, USERNAME, PASSWORD (of your ownCloud/nextCloud/baikal/SOGO/… server)
CONTACT and CALENDAR _ NAME / VISUAL_NAME / CONFIG_NAME (it’s more cosmetic)
CRON_FREQUENCY (for the frequency of synchronization)
Line 61: write
sudo sh -c "echo '$COMMAND_LINE' > /sbin/sogosync", instead ofsudo echo "$COMMAND_LINE" > /sbin/sogosync, to avoid a “Permission denied” error.
Move the file to your Ubuntu Touch device, either by way of a file manager or through the use of ADB:
adb push dav.sh /home/phablet
Connect with the phablet shell (using
adb shell) or type the following directly into the Ubuntu Touch device terminal app:chmod +x dav.sh ./dav.sh
Sources:¶
Contributing to UBports¶
Welcome! You’re probably here because you want to contribute to UBports. The pages you’ll find below here will help you do this in a way that’s helpful to both the project and yourself.
If you’re just getting started, we always need help with thorough bug reporting. If you are multilingual, translations are also a great place to start.
If those aren’t enough for you, see our contribute page for an introduction of our focus groups.
Bug reporting¶
This page contains information to help you help us by reporting an actionable bug for Ubuntu Touch. It does NOT contain information on reporting bugs in apps, most of the time their entry in the OpenStore will specify where and how to do that.
Get the latest Ubuntu Touch¶
This might seem obvious, but it’s easy to miss. Go to (Settings - Updates) and make sure that your device doesn’t have any Ubuntu updates available. If not, continue through this guide. If so, update your device and try to reproduce the bug. If it still occurs, continue through this guide. If not, do a little dance! The bug has already been fixed and you can continue using Ubuntu Touch.
Check if the bug is already reported¶
Open up the bug tracker for ubuntu-touch.
Note
Pinephone users should check for and report bugs here
First, you’ll need to make sure that the bug you’re trying to report hasn’t been reported before. Search through the bugs reported. When searching, use a few words that describe what you’re seeing. For example, “Lock screen transparent” or “Lock screen shows activities”.
If you find that a bug report already exists, select the “Add your Reaction” button (it looks like a smiley face) and select the +1 (thumbs up) reaction. This shows that you are also experiencing the bug.
If the report is missing any of the information specified later in this document, please add it yourself to help the developers fix the bug.
Reproduce the issue you’ve found¶
Next, find out exactly how to recreate the bug that you’ve found. Document the exact steps that you took to find the problem in detail. Then, reboot your phone and perform those steps again. If the problem still occurs, continue on to the next step. If not…
Making the bug report¶
Now it’s time for what you’ve been waiting for, the bug report itself! Bug reports need to be filed in English.
First, pull up the bug tracker and click “New Issue”. Log in to GitHub if you haven’t yet.
Next, you’ll need to name your bug. Pick a name that says what’s happening, but don’t be too wordy. Four to eight words should be enough.
Now, write your bug report. A good bug report includes the following:
What happened: A synopsis of the erroneous behavior
What I expected to happen: A synopsis of what should have happened, if there wasn’t an error
Steps to reproduce: You wrote these down earlier, right?
Software Version: Go to (Settings - About) and list what appears on the “OS” line of this screen. Also include the release channel that you used when you installed Ubuntu on this phone.
Once you’re finished with that, post the report. You can’t add labels yourself, so please don’t forget to state the device you’re experiencing the issue on in the description so a moderator can easily add the correct tags later.
A developer or QA-team member will confirm and triage your bug, then work can begin on it. If you are missing any information, you will be asked for it, so make sure to check in often!
Getting Logs¶
Here we’ll discuss the general steps to get logs, files that contain important debugging messages, on Ubuntu Touch. You may be asked for logs after submitting your issue. This section will help you to retrieve these logs from the device.
Warning
Log files may contain information you prefer to keep private. Please be sure to skim through them to ensure this is not the case before posting them. We can coordinate to get them through e-mail or a similarly less public medium.
To get ready, download the Logviewer app from the OpenStore. This app will help us find, view, and send the logs we need.
Now, open the Logviewer app. You’ll see a list of all of the log files available in your user log folder, /home/phablet/.cache/upstart/. This folder contains many, but not all, of the logs for software running on your device. You can tap on any log to view it, then tap the “send” icon in the top right corner to share it using an online service.
If you don’t see the log that you’ve been asked to send in Logviewer, it may be in a different folder or the application may not have created any logs yet. Tell this to the person who asked you for the logs. They should be able to get you the information you need to get back on track.
Code changes¶
This page helps you get your changes to Ubuntu Touch merged. We describe the things we look for in code, commits, and changesets. We also take a look at what to expect in the code review process.
Assumptions¶
This page does not include information about how to develop applications or changes to Ubuntu Touch. To learn how to develop Ubuntu Touch components, see the System software development section. To learn how to develop applications, see the App development or Preinstalled apps sections.
This page assumes you know how to write your changes, use Git to commit them, push them to GitHub or Gitlab as needed, fork a repository, and make a Pull Request (PR) on GitHub or Merge Request (MR) on GitLab.
Definitions¶
Since we use GitHub and GitLab for our code hosting depending on the component, we use some terms interchangeably in this document.
- changeset
A GitHub Pull Request (PR) or GitLab Merge Request (MR).
- issue report
A GitHub or GitLab Issue.
Reasoning¶
Many users use Ubuntu Touch on many different devices. Breaking functionality that these users rely on can be catastrophic. Our review process helps us avoid broken functionality by ensuring a few properties of the changeset.
In particular, we want to make sure the change:
meets its own goals, such as adding a feature or fixing a bug
does not cause any unexpected behavior
makes it easy for someone to make further changes to the software in the future
The rules on this page explain how you should write and document your changes to Ubuntu Touch. Following these rules makes the review process easier for you and us.
These are not absolute; we won’t automatically reject your change based on whether you follow the rules. If you break a rule, make sure you can explain why.
Code change checklist¶
Keep this checklist in mind while writing your code and as you prepare to commit your changes.
Do not commit commented code¶
As developers, we often comment out code that is only there to help us verify assumptions (like console logging messages). Make sure this never makes it into your commits. If you must disobey this rule, make sure you add a comment explaining why the commented code still exists in the source. If you feel like you must make a // TODO: or // FIXME: comment, consider whether filing an issue report referencing the broken code or TODO item would be better.
Write tests for your changes¶
If a component has a test suite, use it. Make sure that you know how to run the tests for the component and understand the output of those tests. The component’s README file should contain this information. If not and you don’t know how to find it, ask us. We’re happy to help when someone is trying to learn about a component for the first time. However, be prepared to get a pile of links to documentation for a build system or test framework rather than a hand-crafted list of commands for you to run. That may be all we have time to provide. If you’re still confused after checking out the materials you’ve received, feel free to ask again with your new, specific concerns. We would really appreciate it if you added your newfound knowledge to the component’s README. The best time to write documentation is after doing something for the first time.
Once you know how to run the test suite, you can add your tests. Make sure you test as many aspects of your new functionality as you feel are reasonable. Lean on the side of more tests: we rarely ask you to remove tests, but we may ask you to add more.
If you notice that a component doesn’t have a test suite, it’s an excellent time to file a bug on that component! We would appreciate your help adding a test suite, but we do not require that of you.
Follow any existing style guides¶
If a repository has a style guide, use it. If there is no style guide, try to follow the existing style in the file you’re changing as closely as possible.
Commit checklist¶
Long after writing code, we often need to understand how and why it introduces a bug. Commit messages are our first step in understanding these complex questions. This checklist helps future viewers of your code understand why it is the way it is.
For an example of a series of commits that follows these guidelines very well, see the three commits at the top of the git log leading to 840777f in Lomiri. Not every change requires such an in-depth description as these examples. Lean on the side of more detail; someday, you are the one looking back at your commits and wondering why you made them.
Answer crucial questions in commit messages¶
We ask questions like, “what?” “why?” and “how?” to gain context of a situation quickly.
Strive to answer these questions in your commit metadata or content. Doing so helps reviewers and future readers understand the context of a change. In order of importance, answer:
- What?
Answer this question with the first few lines of your commit message. “What does your commit do?” “Optimize wallpapers for load times and memory use”.
- Why?
Always state the reasoning behind a change: the bugs it fixes, the features it builds up to, and especially the limitations that cause it to look more complicated than a viewer expects. Provide permanent links to issue reports or documentation if they give context.
- Who?
Git embeds your name and email address as the committer of your changes. If someone else has helped you write your changes, you should add them with a
Co-Authored-By: Their Name <their-email@example.com>line in your commit message.
It is possible to provide some of this context in code comments rather than in commit messages. Comments can assist people who are only reading the code without using tools like git blame. Bear in mind that comments can quickly become out-of-date compared to the code that they are near. A commit message is linked only to the code you wrote.
In closing, make sure you anticipate any questions you expect yourself or others to have about your code in the future and answer them.
Make commits as small as possible, but no smaller¶
Some changes require multiple logical steps to complete. If this is the case, split these steps into separate commits. Each commit should follow the entire commit checklist. It should not require any of the commits that come after it to build or pass tests.
Let’s say you are implementing a new way to search for phone numbers in the Dialer app. Your change requires three distinct steps:
Fix a bug in the current phone number search
Add a new API to support your new number search
Add the UI elements to use your new search
If you do all of these changes in a single commit and there is a problem in step three, we reject the entire changeset. If you split the changes into separate commits instead, the bug fix and new API could be added to the mainline software while you work on redesigning your UI.
Rebase your changes during the review, if possible¶
It’s common for a commit log on GitHub to go something like this:
Fix bug in phone number search
Add new API call for new phone number search
Add UI for new phone number search
Fix UI
Fix bug fix
Review changes
Fix API after comments from reviewers
If you have to come back to this commit log in the future, you’ll be confused in no time at all. What did the reviewers say, what was wrong with the UI and the bug fix?
Don’t add a new commit when you receive a correction that affects the first commit in your series. Instead, edit the first commit. If doing this changes the information in your commit message, update that too.
Editing commits requires learning new tools in Git. Edit a series of commits with git-rebase. Push the resulting changes with a force push, or create a new branch and open a new changeset.
Luckily, there are graphical tools that make this job more manageable. Unluckily, if you don’t understand what they are doing on the Git command line, you might mess up and have to start over from your old series. Even seasoned Git pros mess up this process sometimes, don’t worry. There is almost always a way back to your old series.
Each commit must continue to build, run, and pass tests after your changes.
Format your commit message correctly¶
Keep the first line of your commit message (the summary) to 50 characters or less. Every other line in the commit message should be 72 characters or less. It’s OK if you have to break the rules — some changes can’t be summarized in 50 characters, and some links are longer than 72.
Changeset description checklist¶
Ensure that your changeset answers the following questions in its description.
If you’ve followed the guidelines for commit messages, you can probably copy the relevant information from the commit messages into your changeset description. GitHub and GitLab do this for you in single-commit changesets. A description that says, “this is complicated to explain; please read the commit messages,” is also acceptable. We trust you to strike a balance.
What issue does your changeset resolve?¶
Link changesets to the issue report that they resolve, whether you add a feature or fix a problem. Specify the devices the issue occurs on or if it applies to all devices. Provide enough information so that someone can look at it and know how to reproduce the problem or test the feature. Add this information to the issue report as well if it is missing.
For example:
How did you test that the change was successful?¶
All changes require testing to ensure they resolve the issue report they’re referencing. List the environment you tested your changes in, including the operating system under test, its version, and the devices you tested on. Explain your testing process. If you are not sure how to test a feature related to your changes, mention it.
For example:
I’ve tested this dialer change on the Nexus 5. It should work on all devices since it’s not modifying anything device-specific, but more testing would be appreciated. To fix a bug, I had to touch a bit of code in the phone number search area (#53). I’m not entirely sure how to test that for regressions.
Do any changes need to be merged before or after this changeset?¶
Some changes depend on one or more changes before they work correctly. If this is the case, you should document the dependencies in your changeset descriptions. Document all sets that must be merged before and after the current one in a series, if needed.
For example, say you’ve filed three Merge Requests on GitLab, ubports/core/docs!1, ubports/core/code!2, and ubports/core/infrastructure!3. They must be merged in that order. In that case, your MR descriptions would have something similar to this included:
In
ubports/core/docs!1:ubports/core/code!2 and ubports/core/infrastructure!3 depend on this MR.
In
ubports/core/code!2:ubports/docs!1 must be merged before this MR. ubports/core/infrastructure!3 depends on this MR.
In
ubports/core/infrastructure!3:ubports/docs!1 and ubports/core/infrastructure!3 must be merged before this MR.
What does the interface look like before and after the change?¶
If your changes also change the look of the user interface, include screenshots to illustrate these changes.
Submission and review¶
Now that you’ve checked your changeset, it’s time to submit it for the review! Thank you in advance for contributing to Ubuntu Touch. Here is what you can expect from us as we review your changes.
We respect you¶
You chose to use your time to contribute to Ubuntu Touch. That decision is never made lightly. A reviewer must treat you with respect and work with you toward your changeset becoming a part of Ubuntu Touch.
Respect is a two-way street. Ubuntu Touch is a large project; there are never enough hands to do all the work needed. It may take a while for your changeset to see any attention, and after a long wait, you might come back to find a stern request for changes. Read a stern-looking message as someone trying to work as quickly as possible, not as an attempt to be rude to you. We extend the same grace to you.
We ask many questions¶
Reviewers better understand the code you’re changing after asking you questions about how it works. They may know what your code does already, but they’ll still ask. If you can explain how your code works, it’s more likely that you have done the proper testing to ensure it works.
If you are not able to articulate why something works, it is a red flag. The change is likely working around a different bug that can come back to haunt us in the future. Fixing the real bug instead of making workarounds is a better use of time.
We ask for changes¶
Another person looking at your code may see problems with it that you have missed. Whether those problems are inefficiencies, style issues, or new bugs, they are more likely to be found by your reviewers than by you. Don’t worry if you get a book of requested changes back from your reviewer. Nobody is perfect. Finding and fixing these potential issues leads to a faster and more stable Ubuntu Touch. It is not an insult to your skills as a developer.
We may ask for massive changes¶
Sometimes reviewers look at a change and realize that a much deeper issue exists in the component. Sometimes you start out developing a feature with the wrong assumptions in mind and end up with an unwieldy mess of spaghetti code. Either way: this is not the correct path to the destination. Whatever the reason, your reviewer points out the potential problems with your change and constructively suggests a new direction for you to take.
You can tell us that we are wrong¶
You might be sure that an underlying bug is not easily fixable or that the path you’ve taken is the best. You might not have enough time to do a fix correctly as asked. If you think that our rejection of your changeset is wrong for any reason, let us know. Reviewers try to work with you to reach a solution that’s best for our users.
Merge and maintenance¶
After ensuring your changeset meets all of our requirements, it becomes a part of Ubuntu Touch. Thank you! You are a member of a small group of people contributing to a beautiful community. However, this is not the end of the work.
Sometimes your changes break a piece of Ubuntu Touch functionality despite our best efforts. You might be called upon to help investigate the source of the issue and prepare a fix if this happens. Your change could be reverted if we find that your change was the direct cause of a bug and we cannot contact you.
New contributors might notice that you have recently worked on a component they want to work with. We would be grateful if you helped teach them what you learned during this process.
If nothing else, stick around for the people thanking you for the change you’ve made. The Ubuntu Touch community is incredibly supportive and thankful. It would be a shame for you to miss your share of the good vibes.
Quality Assurance¶
This page explains how to help the UBports QA team, both as an official member or a new contributor. Please also read the issue tracking and bugreporting guides to better understand the workflow. For real-time communication, you can join our telegram group.
Smoke testing¶
To test the core functionality of the operating system, we have compiled a set of standardized tests. Run these tests on your device to find and report bugs and regressions. It’s usually run on all devices before a new release to make sure no new issues were introduced.
Confirming bug reports¶
Unconfirmed bugreports are labeld needs confirmation to enable global filtering. Browse through the list, read the bugreports and try to reproduce the issues that are described. If necessary, add missing information or logs, or improve the quality of the report by other means. Leave a comment stating your device, channel, build number and whether or not you were able to reproduce the issue.
If you have write-access to the repository, you can replace the needs confirmation label with bug (to mark it confirmed) or invalid (if the issue is definitely not reproducible). In that case it should be closed.
If you find two issues describing the same problem, leave a comment and try to find their differences. If they are in fact identical, close the newer one and label it duplicate.
Testing patches¶
Pull-requests can be tested using the QA scripts. Run ubports-qa -h for usage information.
Once the pull-request has been merged, the issue it fixes is moved to the quality assurance column of the GitHub project. Please check if the issues in this column are still present in the latest update on the devel channel, then see if anything else has broken in the update. Check if the developer mentioned specific things to look out for when testing and leave a comment detailing your experience. If you have write-access to the repository, you can move the issue back to In Development (and reopen it) or forward to Release Candidate as specified by the issue tracking guidelines.
Initial triaging of issues¶
Initial triaging of new issues is done by QA-team members with write-access to the repository. If a new issue is filed, read the report and add the correct labels as specified by the issue tracking guidelines. You can also immediately start confirming the bugreport.
If the new issue has already been reported elsewhere, label it duplicate and close it.
Documentation¶
Tip
Documentation on this site is written in ReStructuredText, or RST for short. Please check the RST Primer if you are not familiar with RST.
This page will guide you through writing great documentation for the UBports project that can be featured on this site.
Documentation guidelines¶
These rules govern how you should write your documentation to avoid problems with style, format, or linking.
Title¶
All pages must have a document title that will be shown in the table of contents (left sidebar) and at the top of the page.
Titles should be “sentence cased” rather than “Title Cased”. For example:
Incorrect casing:
Writing A Good Bug Report
Correct casing:
Writing a good bug report
Correct casing when proper nouns are involved:
Installing Ubuntu Touch on your phone
There isn’t a single definition of title casing that everyone follows, but sentence casing is easy. This helps keep capitalization in the table of contents consistent.
Page titles are underlined with equals signs. For example, the markup for Bug reporting includes the following title:
Bug reporting
=============
Note that:
The title is sentence cased
The title is underlined with equals signs
The underline spans the title completely without going over
Incorrect examples of titles include:
Incorrect casing
Bug Reporting =============
Underline too short
Bug reporting =====
Underline too long
Bug reporting ================
Headings¶
There are several levels of headings that you may place on your page. These levels are shown here in order:
Page title
==========
Level one
---------
Level two
^^^^^^^^^
Level three
"""""""""""
Each heading level creates a sub-section in the global table of contents tree available when the documentation is built. In the primary (web) version of the documentation, this only shows four levels deep from the top level of the documentation. Please refrain from using more heading levels than will show in this tree as it makes navigating your document difficult. If you must use this many heading levels, it is a good sign that your document should be split up into multiple pages.
Table of contents¶
People can’t navigate to your new page if they can’t find it. Neither can Sphinx. That’s why you need to add new pages to Sphinx’s table of contents.
You can do this by adding the page to the index.rst file in the same directory that you created it. For example, if you create a file called “newpage.rst”, you would add the line marked with a chevron (>) in the nearest index:
.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 1
:name: example-toc
oldpage
anotheroldpage
> newpage
The order matters. If you would like your page to appear in a certain place in the table of contents, place it there. In the previous example, newpage would be added to the end of this table of contents.
Moving pages¶
Sometimes it becomes necessary to move a page from one place in the documentation to another. Generally this is to improve document flow: For example, it makes more sense for the page to come after a page you’ve just added in a different section.
However, people link to our documentation from many sources that we do not control. Blogs, websites, and other documentation sites can direct people here using links that they may never update. It is a terrible experience to follow a link from a different site and land on a 404 page, left to your own devices to find your way in restructured documentation.
We use a tool called Rediraffe to avoid this bad experience. Rediraffe creates redirect pages which can send a user from an old, invalid link to a new, useful link. Please create a redirect link when changing a page’s name or moving a page within the documentation’s directory structure. Redirect links are created by placing the filename of the old document and the filename of the new document, relative to the documentation’s root, in the redirects.txt file.
We use Rediraffe’s checkdiff builder to ensure that pages are not deleted from the documentation without a redirect in place. This builder is run as part of the build.sh script in the repository and as part of our automated build once you submit a Pull Request.
What follows are some examples of situations where you should create redirects.
You are moving systemdev/calendars.rst to appdev/calendars.rst. Add the following to the redirects.txt file:
"systemdev/calendars.txt" "appdev/calendars.txt"
You are moving appdev/clickable.rst into several pages in appdev/clickable/ to give significantly more information about the tool than there was previously. You have created an introduction page, appdev/clickable/introduction.rst. In this case, it would be a good idea to redirect the old page to the new introduction page. This can be done by adding the following to redirects.txt:
"appdev/clickable.rst" "appdev/clickable/introduction.rst"
Warnings¶
Your edits must not introduce any warnings into the documentation build. If any warnings occur, the build will fail and your pull request will be marked with a red ‘X’. Please ensure that your RST is valid and correct before you create a pull request. This is done automatically (via sphinx-build crashing with your error) if you follow our build instructions below.
Line length¶
There is no restriction on line length in this repository. Please do not break lines at an arbitrary line length. Instead, turn on word wrap in your text editor.
Contribution workflow¶
The following steps will help you to make a contribution to this documentation after you have written a document.
Note
You will need a GitHub account to complete these steps. If you do not have one, click here to begin the process of making an account.
Forking the repository¶
You can make more advanced edits to our documentation by forking ubports/docs.ubports.com on GitHub. If you’re not sure how to do this, check out the excellent GitHub guide on forking projects.
Building the documentation¶
If you’d like to build this documentation before sending a PR (which you should), follow these instructions on your local copy of your fork of the repository.
The documentation can be built by running ./build.sh in the root of this repository. The script will also create a virtual build environment in ~/ubportsdocsenv if none is present.
If all went well, you can enter the _build/html directory and open index.html to view the UBports documentation.
If you have trouble building the docs, the first thing to try is deleting the build environment. Run rm -r ~/ubportsdocsenv and try the build again. Depending on when you first used the build script, you may need to run the rm command with sudo.
Final check of your contribution¶
After you have created your PR on github, the CI (continuous integration) system will make a test build of your contribution. Please double check whether this builds successfully and whether the result looks as you intended it to:
Scroll to the bottom of the “Conversation” tab of your PR on github, here you will see the checks (You may have to click on “Show all checks”)
It can have a yellow dot, i.e., “pending” then wait a few more seconds.
Or it may have a red X, i.e., it failed. In this case please check why it failed
If it shows a green check mark, it means the PR could be built successfully
Now please click on “Details”,
then “Artifacts” on the top right,
then “_build/html/..index.html”,
and finally on “Go to start page”.
Now you can browse a complete build of the UBports docs site with your contribution included. Double check whether your changes look ok.
Alternative methods to contribute¶
Translations¶
You may find the components of this document to translate at its project in UBports Weblate.
Writing documents not in RST format¶
If you would like to write documents for UBports but are not comfortable writing ReStructuredText, please write it without formatting and post it on the UBports Forum in the relevant section (likely General). Someone will be able to help you revise your draft and write the required ReStructuredText.
Uncomfortable with Git¶
If you’ve written a complete document in ReStructuredText but aren’t comfortable using Git or GitHub, please post it on the UBports Forum in the relevant section (likely General). Someone will be able to help you revise your draft and submit it to this documentation.
Current TODOs¶
This section lists the TODOs that have been included in this documentation. If you know how to fix one, please send us a Pull Request to make it better!
To create a todo, add this markup to your page:
.. todo::
My todo text
Todo
There is also another way to create somewhat more featureful webapps, sometimes referred to as webapp+ or alternative container. This needst to be properly documented. It’s a simple qml app that can be easily configured. Creation is almost as simple as ‘classic’ webapp, but result is more powerfull with the a nice navigation feature. A rather advanced example of this is the YouTube app from Mateo Salta which has quite some modifications on top of the template.
(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/doniks-docsubportscom/checkouts/latest/appdev/webapp/index.rst, line 19.)
Todo
Document the process for Nexus 4 (mako)
(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/doniks-docsubportscom/checkouts/latest/systemdev/kernel-hal.rst, line 57.)
Translations¶
Although English is the official base language for all UBports projects we believe you have the right to use it in any language you want.
We are working hard to meet that goal, and you can help as well. You decide how much time you can put into translation. From minutes to hours, everything counts.
How does a text get translated (technical background)¶
Most apps running on Ubuntu Touch use GNU gettext for translations. A .pot template file holds an apps strings. From this template for every language an individual .po file is derived. Those .po files do contain the actual translations. To add a new language a new .po file needs to be created. To translate a string the .po file needs to be edited. Next to the original string (english in most cases) the appropriate translation needs to be entered following the .po gettext file syntax. Some apps do use QtLinguist for translation. It does follow the same priciples only using .ts files for translations with another syntax. As template one .ts file is used.
Within an app strings are marked either this way i18n.tr("string") when using gettext or like this tr("string") when using QtLinguist. When the app is built those translatable strings are extracted and written into the .pot or .ts template files. The .po and .ts language files then need to be updated from their template.
Once strings have been translated, they are made available for users with a new release of an app.
Methods of Translation¶
There are three commonly used ways to translate an app:
Weblate: A web based translation tool. UBports apps using Weblate can be translated here. There is an automatic transfer of new strings from an apps repo to weblate. Translated strings get back as commits to the repo from weblate.
Editor: Translation is done by changing .po files with the editor of your choice, and a GitHub/GitLab account. The .po/.ts files for each project are in their repository on our GitLab organization or on our GitHub organization. After translating the translator commits new translations to an apps repo generally by opening a merge request/pull request.
Team translation: We also have a Translation Forum to discuss translating Ubuntu Touch and its core apps. Some projects are using Telegram or Matrix groups too, and some teams are still using the Ubuntu Launchpad framework.
Core apps and some community apps like dekko or TELEports are generally using weblate for translation. This is the preferred way to translate and it does not need any programming skills. Please have a look at the UBports translation projects. When using weblate do not edit .po files manually. Commiting edited .po files can break the automated process of translation.
Most apps maintained by individual developers are mainly using .pot/.po files for translation. Those generally need to be edited manually and commited to the apps repo.
How-To¶
UBports Weblate¶
You can go to UBports Weblate, click on “Dashboard” button, go to a project, and start making anonymous suggestions without being registered. If you want to save your translations, you must be logged in.
For that, go to UBports Weblate and click on the “Register” button. Once in the “Registration” page, you’ll find two options:
Register using a valid email address, a username, and your full name. You’ll need to resolve an easy control question too.
Register using a third party registration. Currently the system supports accounts from openSUSE, GitHub, Fedora, and Ubuntu.
Once you’re logged in, the site is self-explanatory and there you’ll find all the options and customization you can do.
Now, get on with it. The first step is to search if your language already exists in the project of your choice. If your language is not available for a specific project, you can add it yourself.
.po/.ts File Editor¶
If you want to work with .po/.ts files directly you need to know what you’re doing for sure. The first thing you should always remember is:
Warning
Do never commit .po files to projects that are translated using weblate. This could break the whole translation exchange process with weblate.
As was said up above, you need a file editor of your choice and a GitHub/GitLab account to translate .po/.ts files directly. Idealy you do have clickable set up and know how to build an app.
There are online gettext .po editors and those you can install on your computer. You can choose whatever editor you want, but we prefer to work with free software only. There are too many plain text editors and tools to help you translate .po/.ts files to list here.
Note
For high quality translations it is recommended to go through all of the steps given below. Although if you are not familiar with building apps using clickable, skip the steps 4. to 6. Although, you may not be able to translate the latest strings and you will not know if the strings fit into the apps layout.
How to proceed:
Fork the apps repo into your GitHub or GitLab account
Clone the repo locally or use GitLab’s online editor
(optional) Create a new branch for the translation
Build the app using clickable to get up-to-date .pot/.ts template files
Update the desired .po/.ts language file(s) from the template
Translate all strings
Build and install the app on your device and test the translations
(optional) Repeat steps 6. and 7. until you are satisfied with your work
Push the translated .po/.ts file(s) to your forked repo [do NOT commit .pot/.ts template files]
Open a merge/pull request from your fork to the apps repo
Translation Team Communication¶
You may talk to others regarding translations by using the forum category that UBports provides for this task. To use it you need to register, or login if you’re registered already.
The only requirement is to start your post putting down your language in brackets in the “Enter your topic title here” field. For example, [Spanish] How to translate whatever?
In your interactions with your team you’ll find the best way to coordinate your translations.
License¶
All the translation projects, and all your contributions to this project, are under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license that you explicitly accept by contributing to the project.
Go to that link to learn what this exactly means.
Preinstalled apps¶
This page will help you get started with developing the apps which are included with Ubuntu Touch.
Core apps¶
Core apps are applications which are included with UBports distributions of Ubuntu Touch and placed in the OpenStore for updates. Core apps are a good “first development” experience within UBports. Many are built with Clickable, an easy to use build and test system for Ubuntu Touch apps. Most core apps can even be built and run without an Ubuntu Touch device!
Which core apps currently exist?¶
A full list of the Ubuntu Touch core apps follows.
Application Name |
Store page |
Code repository |
|---|---|---|
Calculator |
||
Calendar |
||
Clock |
||
File Manager |
||
Gallery |
||
Music |
||
Notes |
||
OpenStore |
||
Terminal |
||
UBports Welcome |
||
Weather |
Other preinstalled apps¶
The following applications are preinstalled in Ubuntu Touch but are not considered core apps. Most of the time these projects must be updated with the system because they use many system services which do not necessarily have a stable API.
These apps may be more difficult to work with, but their repository should contain a document stating how to build and run them on a device.
Browser (morph-browser on GitHub)
Contacts (address-book-app on GitHub)
Camera (camera-app on GitLab)
External Drives (ciborium on GitHub)
Media Player (mediaplayer-app on GitHub)
Messaging (messaging-app on GitHub)
Phone (dialer-app on GitHub)
System Settings (system-settings on GitHub)
Instructions for contributing to these applications can be found in their respective repositories.
Monetary support¶
You can help us keep the lights on at UBports by becoming a patron on Liberapay or Patreon!
Your contribution finances our server infrastructure and debug services, and helps covering additional costs.
App development¶
You’d like to develop an app for Ubuntu Touch? Great!
Quick start¶
Building your first app should be as simple as:
Plug in your Ubuntu Touch device
Enable developer mode in System Settings
Run
clickable createChoose “QML Only” from the list of app templates
Fill in the requested information for this new app
When the app has been generated, enter the newly created directory
Run
clickable
Voilà you have your first app running on Ubuntu Touch!
Overview¶
Ubuntu Touch supports two kinds of apps: Firstly, native apps have their user interface written in QML or HTML and their business logic in JavaScript, C++, Python, Rust, or Go. Secondly, web apps are special containers to run websites in.
Native apps¶
The recommended way to build a native application on Ubuntu Touch is to use the Qt framework (current version since OTA-16 is Qt 5.12.9). You do not have to stick with the traditional C++<->QML Qt model, you can use also Python, Go, Rust or even Javascript for your backend.
Ubuntu Touch provides a subset of Qt QML components to ease the development of your app : QML API and Icons: Suru Icons, but you can also ship your cross platform app using standard Qt QML QtQuick2 components.
You can use Clickable to facilitate Packaging, deploying, publishing and tests .
Check out informations about the platform and confinement model in Platform section
Web apps¶
Ubuntu Webapps can be a nice way to deliver online web applications into Ubuntu.
The Ubuntu platform provides an advanced web engine container to run online applications on the Ubuntu client devices.
Web applications are hosted online. They can be as simple as a website, like an online news site, or they can distribute content like videos. They can also have a rich user interface or use the WebGL extension to deliver games online.
Note
Ubuntu webapps and Ubuntu HTML5 apps are similar but not identical. The main difference is that the content of a webapp is provided through a URL, whereas HTML5 apps install their content (and usually provide an Ubuntu HTML5 GUI). Webapps also have restricted access to platform APIs.
Note
A different approach to webapps published in the open store is to simply create shortcuts directly yourself with webber app.
Todo
There is also another way to create somewhat more featureful webapps, sometimes referred to as webapp+ or alternative container. This needst to be properly documented. It’s a simple qml app that can be easily configured. Creation is almost as simple as ‘classic’ webapp, but result is more powerfull with the a nice navigation feature. A rather advanced example of this is the YouTube app from Mateo Salta which has quite some modifications on top of the template.
Guide¶
Webapp guide¶
A web app displays in a webview inside a webapp-container that runs as an Ubuntu app in the Ubuntu/Unity shell.
Taking a closer look:
At the innermost level, there is a website that the developer identifies by URL. The website is rendered and runs in an Oxide webview. Oxide is a Blink/Chrome webview that is customized for Ubuntu. The Oxide webview runs and displays in the webapp-container. The webapp-container is the executable app runtime that is integrated with the Ubuntu/unity shell.
You can launch a webapp from the terminal with::
webapp-container URL
For example::
webapp-container http://www.ubuntu.com
This simple form works, but almost every webapp also uses other features, such as URL containment with URL patterns as described below.
A webapp generally fills the entire app screen space, without the need of the UI controls generally found on standard browsers.
In some cases some navigation controls are appropriate, such as Back and Forward buttons, or a URL address bar. These are added as command line arguments:
--enable-back-forwardEnable the display of the back and forward buttons in the toolbar (at the bottom of the webapp window)
--enable-addressbarEnable the display of the address bar (at the bottom of the webapp window)
Webapp authors often want to contain browsing to the target website. That is, the developer wants to control the URLs that can be opened in the webapp (all other URLs are opened in the browser). This is done with URL patterns as part of the webapp command line.
However, many web apps use pages that are hosted over multiple sites or that use external resources and pages.
However, both containment and access to specified external URLs are implemented with URL patterns provided as arguments at launch time. Let’s take a closer look.
By default, there is no URL containment. Suppose you launch a webapp without any patters and only a starting URL like this::
webapp-container http://www.ubuntu.com
The user can navigate to any URL without limitation. For example, if they click the Developer button at the top, they navigate to developer.ubuntu.com, and it displays in the webapp.
Tip: You can see the URL of the current page by enabling the address bar with --enable-addressbar.
One often wants to contain users to the site itself. That is, if the website is www.ubuntu.com, it may be useful to contain webapp users only to subpages of www.ubuntu.com. This is done by adding a wildcard URL pattern to the launch command, as follows::
webapp-container --webappUrlPatterns=http://www.ubuntu.com/* http://www.ubuntu.com
--webappUrlPatterns=indicates a pattern is nexthttp://www.ubuntu.com/* is the pattern The asterisk is a wildcard that matches any valid sequence of trailing (right-most) characters in a URL
With this launch command and URL pattern, the user can navigate to and open in the webapp any URL that starts with http://www.ubuntu.com/. For example, they can click on the Phone button (http://www.ubuntu.com/phone) in the banner and it opens in the webapp, or the Tablet button (http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet). But, clicking Developer opens the corresponding URL in the browser.
Tip: Make sure to fully specify the subdomain in your starting URL, that is, use http://www.ubuntu.com instead of www.ubuntu.com. Not specifying the subdomain would create an ambiguous URL and thus introduces security concerns.
You might want to limit access to only some subpages of your site from within the webapp. This is easy with wildcard patterns. (Links to other subpages are opened in the browser.) For example, the following allows access to www.ubuntu.com/desktop/features and www.ubuntu.com/phone/features while not allowing access to www.ubuntu.com/desktop or www.ubuntu.com/phone:
webapp-container --webappUrlPatterns=http://www.ubuntu.com/*/features http://www.ubuntu.com
You can use multiple patterns by separating them with a comma. For example, the following allows access only to www.ubuntu.com/desktop/features and www.ubuntu.com/phone/features::
webapp-container --webappUrlPatterns=http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/features,http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/features http://www.ubuntu.com
Tip: Multiple patterns are often necessary to achieve the intended containment behavior.
Many URLs have one or more subdomains. (For example, in the following, “developer” is the subdomain: developer.ubuntu.com.) You can allow access to a single subdomain (and all of its subpages) with a pattern like this::
--webappUrlPatterns=http://developer.ubuntu.com/*
However, one usually wants the user to be able to navigate back to the starting URL (and its subpages). So, if the starting URL is http://www.ubuntu.com, a second pattern is needed::
--webappUrlPatterns=http://developer.ubuntu.com/*,http://www.ubuntu.com/*
Putting these together, here’s an example that starts on http://www.ubuntu.com and allows navigation to http://developer.ubuntu.com and subpages and back to http://www.ubuntu.com and subpages::
webapp-container --webappUrlPatterns=http://developer.ubuntu.com/*,http://www.ubuntu.com/* http://www.ubuntu.com
Some URLs have multiple subdomains. For example, www.ubuntu.com has design.ubuntu.com, developer.ubuntu.com and more. You can add access to all subdomains with a wildcard in the subdomain position::
webapp-container --webappUrlPatterns=http://*.ubuntu.com/* http://www.ubuntu.com
Note: An asterisk in the subdomain position matches any valid single subdomain. This single pattern is sufficient to enable browsing to any subdomain and subpages, including back to the starting URL (http://www.ubuntu.com) and its subpages.
Sometimes a site uses https for some of its URLs. Here is an example that allows https and https as access within the webapp to www.launchpad.net (and all subpages due to the wildcard)::
webapp-container --webappUrlPatterns=https?://http://www.launchpad.net/* http://www.launchpad.net
Note: the question mark in https?. This means the preceding character (the ‘s’) is optional. If https is always required, omit the question mark.
The webapp-container accepts many options to fine tune how it hosts various web applications.
See all help with::
webapp-container --help
Note: Only the following options apply to converged Ubuntu.:
--fullscreen Display full screen
--inspector[=PORT] Run a remote inspector on a specified port or 9221 as the default port
--app-id=APP_ID Run the application with a specific APP_ID
--name=NAME Display name of the webapp, shown in the splash screen
--icon=PATH Icon to be shown in the splash screen. PATH can be an absolute or path relative to CWD
--webappUrlPatterns=URL_PATTERNS List of comma-separated url patterns (wildcard based) that the webapp is allowed to navigate to
--accountProvider=PROVIDER_NAME Online account provider for the application if the application is to reuse a local account.
--accountSwitcher Enable switching between different Online Accounts identities
--store-session-cookies Store session cookies on disk
--enable-media-hub-audio Enable media-hub for audio playback
--user-agent-string=USER_AGENT Overrides the default User Agent with the provided one.
Chrome options (if none specified, no chrome is shown by default)::
--enable-back-forward Enable the display of the back and forward buttons (implies --enable-addressbar)
--enable-addressbar Enable the display of a minimal chrome (favicon and title)
Note: The other available options are specific to desktop webapps. It is recommended to not use them anymore.
Some websites check specific portions of the web engine identity, aka the User-Agent string, to adjust their presentation or enable certain features. While not a recommended practice, it is sometimes necessary to change the default string sent by the webapp container.
To change the string from the command line, use the following option::
--user-agent-string='<string>' Replaces the default user-agent string by the string specified as a parameter
The webapp experience is contained and isolated from the browser data point of view. That is webapps do not access data from any other installed browser, such as history, cookies and so on. Other browser on the system do not access the webapp’s data.
W3C allows apps to use local storage, and Oxide/Webapp-container supports the main standards here: LocalStorage, IndexedDB, WebSQL.
Quick start¶
There are several tools to help you package and deploy your webapp to your device:
Webapp creator application available from the openstore
Clickable CLI
Debugging your webapp¶
This guide give you some tips to help you debug your webapp.
Debug webapps¶
Most web-devs will probably want do most of their coding and debugging in the usual browser environment. The Ubuntu Touch browser is compliant with modern web standards, and most webapps will just work without further changes.
For those (hopefully) rare cases where further debugging is needed, there are two ways to gain further information on the failure.
Watch the logs¶ If you are comfortable in a CLI environment, most Javascript errors will leave an entry in the app log file:
.cache/upstart/application-click-[YOUR_APP_NAME.AUTHOR_NAME..].logYou can check the log file in the terminal or use the LogViewer app.
Note
Enable developer mode for debugging to keep logs until the next reboot. Without developer mode enabled, logs will get deleted after you close the app.
Debugging in the browser¶ The default Ubuntu Touch browser is based on the Blink technology that is also used in Chrome/Chromium. By starting the browser in a special mode, you have access to the regular Chrome-style debugger.
On your phone, start the browser in inspector mode::
export QTWEBENGINE_REMOTE_DEBUGGING=0.0.0.0:9221 morph-browser --desktop_file_hint=/usr/share/applications/morph-browser.desktop [web_site_url]Now on your computer, launch Chrome/Chromium browser, and point address to
http://YOUR_UT_IP_ADDRESS:9221
The following sections provide guides and API documentation.
Clickable is the main tool to build apps on Ubuntu Touch. It is an easy to use command line tool with a lot of great features. Clickable allows you to compile, build, test, and publish your app. It also provides various templates to get you started with app development.
You can use any code editor or IDE to work on the code. Then you build your app from the command line with Clickable.
Applications are shipped as a click package and can be published on the official app store OpenStore. Note also that most apps in the OpenStore are open source and can serve as references and inspiration.
References and guides¶
Code editor integrations¶
Atom
You can use clickable with the Atom Editor by installing the atom-clickable-plugin. Or you can simply run
clickable ide atomin your project directory to launch an Atom editor instance on top of your docker image. This way you will have all Atom features - including the clickable plugin - available for you project.QtCreator
Available on top of clickable docker image,
clickable ide qtcreatorcommand within your project directory will launch a QtCreator instance and auto setup the project for you, you will have code completion and navigation for Ubuntu Touch components as well as run/debug facilities.Ubuntu SDK ( Unmaintained )
Alternatively there is the old Ubuntu SDK IDE. Be aware that it is no longer supported by Canonical, and UBports has chosen to not support it either due to lack of manpower.
You can still install the SDK IDE in Ubuntu 16.04, but it is not guaranteed to work correctly. You can use the following commands to install:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-sdk-team/ppa sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade sudo apt install ubuntu-sdk sudo reboot # or logout/login
Developer guides¶
To get started with your first app check out the following developer guides:
If you are interested in helping to create developer guides check out our GitLab Project.
To get familiar with some more advanced concepts see the following sections:
The content hub - tips and tricks¶
Content Hub Share Page¶
On Ubuntu Touch the apps are confined. The way of sharing files between them is through the Content Hub, a part of the system that takes care of file import, export and sharing.
Different ways of sharing the content¶
As we can see in the Content Hub documentation, there are several ways of handling the file to be shared:
ContentHandler.Source(The selected app will provide a file to be imported)ContentHandler.Destination(The selected app will be the destination for the exported file)ContentHandler.Share(The selected app will be the destination for the exported file, which will then be shared externally)
Webapp Creator on the OpenStore¶
Looking into the code of Webapp Creator, we’ll find the code to import an image to be used as icon. Tapping on the place holder will open the Content Hub that will let us choose from where to import the image (see the Webapp Creator source code)
ContentPeerPicker {
anchors { fill: parent; topMargin: picker.header.height }
visible: parent.visible
showTitle: false
contentType: picker.contentType //ContentType.Pictures
handler: picker.handler //ContentHandler.Source
ContentPeerPicker is the element that shows the apps.
var importPage = mainPageStack.push(Qt.resolvedUrl("ImportPage.qml"),{"contentType": ContentType.Pictures, "handler": ContentHandler.Source})
contentType is passed in Main.qml as ContentType.Pictures. So, we will only see apps from which we only can import images. handler is passed in the same line as ContentHandler.Source. As we want to import an image from the app selected in the Content Hub.
Gelek in the OpenStore¶
In Gelek, we are going to end with some saved games that we want to save in our device or share with ourselves (in Telegram and then save them to our computer).
Tapping on the download icon we will get a Content Hub to save the game file (which is actually an export).
The game file is a file of type glksave. We will tell Content Hub that we are sending a file of type All (see the Install Page code).
ContentPeerPicker {
anchors { fill: parent; topMargin: picker.header.height }
visible: parent.visible
showTitle: false
contentType: ContentType.All
handler: ContentHandler.Destination
onPeerSelected: {
contentType is ContentType.All, so we will only see apps which are able to receive unmarked file types. handler is ContentHandler.Destination, so the app selected should store the saved game.
Tapping on the File Manager we will save the saved game in the folder we choose.
Wait a minute. Why the different apps?¶
Content Hub: Export vs Share¶
Each developer can decide the rules each app would follow in relation to the Content Hub. Why the OpenStore is shown as the destination of an export?
Let’s check its manifest.json
"hooks": {
"openstore": {
"apparmor": "openstore/openstore.apparmor",
"desktop": "openstore/openstore.desktop",
"urls": "openstore/openstore.url-dispatcher",
"content-hub": "openstore/openstore-contenthub.json"
}
},
The above code defines that the hooks for the app named "openstore" in relation to the "content-hub" should follow the rules defined in openstore-contenthub.json
{
"destination": [
"all"
]
}
This means, the OpenStore will be the destination for all ContentTypes.
What about uMatriks? Let’s see its content-hub.json
{
"destination": [
"pictures",
"documents",
"videos",
"contacts",
"music"
],
"share": [
"pictures",
"documents",
"videos",
"contacts",
"music"
],
"source": [
"pictures",
"documents",
"videos",
"contacts",
"music"
]
}
So, with this example, uMatriks will be able to be the destination, source and share app for all kinds of ContentType.
What about the other hooks in the manifest.json? That is discussed in the next guide.
Importing from Content Hub and URLdispatcher¶
"hooks": {
"openstore": {
"apparmor": "openstore/openstore.apparmor",
"desktop": "openstore/openstore.desktop",
"urls": "openstore/openstore.url-dispatcher",
"content-hub": "openstore/openstore-contenthub.json"
}
},
In the previous guide we have seen a little bit about how Content Hub works. In this guide we will see how URLdispatcher works and how to handle imported data from the Content Hub.
Handle data from the Content Hub¶
OpenStore app from open-store.io¶
One of the easiest ways of testing an app, is to send a test click to yourself on Telegram, and opening that click file with the OpenStore through the Content Hub:
If we tap on the OpenStore app, it will be opened and it will ask if we want to install the click file. Let’s take a look into the Main.qml code of the app to see how it is done:
Connections {
target: ContentHub
onImportRequested: {
var filePath = String(transfer.items[0].url).replace('file://', '')
print("Should import file", filePath)
var fileName = filePath.split("/").pop();
var popup = PopupUtils.open(installQuestion, root, {fileName: fileName});
popup.accepted.connect(function() {
contentHubInstallInProgress = true;
PlatformIntegration.clickInstaller.installPackage(filePath)
})
}
}
Do you see that Connections element that targets the ContentHub? When it receives the signal onImportRequested, it will take the url of the data sent from the Content Hub (transfer.items[0].url is the url of the first data sent) and open a PopUp element to let the user install the click.
What about the URLdispatcher?¶
The URL dispatcher is a piece of software, similar to the Content Hub, that makes our life easier trying to choose the correct app for a certain protocol. For example: We probably want to open the web browser when tapping on an http protocol. If we tap on a map link it is handy to open it with uNav or to open a twitter link in the Twitter app! How does that work?
The URLdispatcher selects which app (according to their manifest.json) will open a certain link.
Let’s see how our navigation app looks inside. uNav’s manifest shows special hooks for the URLdispatcher in its manifest.json code:
1 [
2 {
3 "protocol": "http",
4 "domain-suffix": "map.unav.me"
5 },
6 {
7 "protocol": "http",
8 "domain-suffix": "unav-go.github.io"
9 },
10 {
11 "protocol": "geo"
12 },
13 {
14 "protocol": "http",
15 "domain-suffix": "www.openstreetmap.org"
16 },
17 {
18 "protocol": "http",
19 "domain-suffix": "www.opencyclemap.org"
20 },
21 {
22 "protocol": "https",
23 "domain-suffix": "maps.google.com"
24 }
25 ]
This means that a link that looks like http://map.unav.me/xxxxx,xxxxx will be opened in uNav. And that’s defined in lines 2 and 3, where it looks for protocol http followed by map.unav.me.
Also, a URI formatted geo:xxx,xxx should open in uNav, as it’s defined in line 11.
And how do we manage the received URL?¶
After the URLdispatcher sends the link to the correspondent app, we need to handle that URL or URI in the targeted app. Let’s see how to do that:
In the main qml file, we need to add some code to know what to do with the dispatched URL. Let’s check how Linphone app manages this adding a connection to the URI Handler with a Connections element setting UriHandler as a target.
Connections {
target: UriHandler
onOpened: {
console.log('Open from UriHandler')
if (uris.length > 0) {
console.log('Incoming call from UriHandler ' + uris[0]);
showIncomingCall(uris[0]);
}
}
}
This code will manage an URI in the form linphone://sip:xxx@xxx.xx when the app is opened. But what do we need to do to handle this link when the app is closed?
We need to add a little bit extra code that will cover two cases: 1) We receive one URL 2) We receive more than one URL
Let’s check if Qt.application.arguments is not empty and if not, if any argument matches our URI format.
Component.onCompleted: {
//Check if opened the app because we have an incoming call
if (Qt.application.arguments && Qt.application.arguments.length > 0) {
for (var i = 0; i < Qt.application.arguments.length; i++) {
if (Qt.application.arguments[i].match(/^linphone/)) {
console.log("Incoming Call on Closed App")
showIncomingCall(Qt.application.arguments[i]);
}
}
}
//Start timer for Registering Status
checkStatus.start()
}
Remember to check that %u (to receive 1 URL) or %U (to receive 1 or more URLs) is present under the Exec line in the .desktop file of the app.
Tools¶
From command line, url-dispatcher-dump command will give you the full list of registered protocol schemes and their corresponding app.
Another usefull tool, but not installed by default on devices is url-dispatcher-tools, it allows you to simulate a call from a third party app. e.g: url-dispatcher https://youtu.be/CIX-a-i6B1w will launch youtube webapp.
To install, it make your partition writable (sudo mount -o rw,remount /) and install it via sudo apt install url-dispatcher-tools
What happens if more than one app has the same URL type defined?¶
A very good question. What happens if we tap on a Twitter link? How is such a URL handled by the URLdispatcher as protocol http or the protocol http://twitter?
What happens if two apps have the same defined protocol?
Now it’s time to do some tests and share the results in the next guide.
Push notifications¶
Let’s assume that you have an app created with Clickable and published on the OpenStore. But now you want to be able to send Push Notifications to your users. First of all, you need to understand how this is working:
Every app which uses push notifications has got a unique token. This token identifies the user, the device and the app itself. The token is generated by the UBports Push Service.
You will need the token to send a push notification. So the app sends its token to the app developer’s server.
With the token you can send a HTTP request to the UBports Push Server which will forward the notification the user’s device.
Let’s practice this step-by-step.
Note
In the following example we will not implement a server. Also the communication between your app and your server is up to you. Please inform the user about the communication with your server by providing a privacy policy!
Make the app ready for push notifications¶
First we need to add the policy group “push-notification-client”. Your apparmor file could look like this:
{
"policy_groups": [
"networking",
"push-notification-client"
],
"policy_version": 16.04
}
In the next step we need to modify the Qml parts. We need to add a pushclient component:
//...
import Ubuntu.PushNotifications 0.1
//...
PushClient {
id: pushClient
appId: "myapp.yourname_hookname"
onTokenChanged: console.log("👍", pushClient.token)
}
You need to set the correct appId! If the app name in your manifest file is myapp.yourname and the name of the main hook (the one which handles the .desktop file) is hookname, then the appId is: myapp.yourname_hookname. When we now start the app, it will get a token and print this token in the logs. With clickable logs we will be able to copy this token out of the terminal. But the app is not yet ready to receive a push notification. For this we need something called a pushhelper!
The pushhelper is a part of the app which will receive all push notifications and process them before sending them to the system notification center. It will receive a json-file and must output another json-file in the correct format. The pushhelper is seperated from the app. So we need a new hook in the manifest. It could look like this:
{
//...
"title": "myapp",
"hooks": {
"myapp": {
"apparmor": "myapp.apparmor",
"desktop": "myapp.desktop"
},
"push": {
"apparmor": "push-apparmor.json",
"push-helper": "push.json"
}
},
//...
}
It should be clear that we now need a different apparmor file and a different executable file. The push-apparmor.json file must only contain the policy group push-notification-client and should look like this:
{
"template": "ubuntu-push-helper",
"policy_groups": [
"push-notification-client"
],
"policy_version": 16.04
}
The push.json is for redirecting to the executable file:
{
"exec": "pushexec"
}
In our tutorial we will use python to create a executable named pushexec which will forward the notification without changing anything:
#!/usr/bin/python3
import sys
f1, f2 = sys.argv[1:3]
open(f2, "w").write(open(f1).read())
We also need to add this new files to the CMakeLists.txt and make the pushexec executable:
[…]
install(FILES pushexec PERMISSIONS OWNER_EXECUTE OWNER_WRITE OWNER_READ DESTINATION ${DATA_DIR})
install(FILES push.json DESTINATION ${DATA_DIR})
install(FILES push-apparmor.json DESTINATION ${DATA_DIR})
[…]
Now the app is ready to receive and process push notifications!
Using the Push Service API¶
So now you have the token and the app is ready to receive and process push notifications. To send a notification, you need to send a HTTP request to this address: https://push.ubports.com/notify The content-type must be application/json and it must fit in the correct format. A example in javascript could look like this:
var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
req.open("post", "https://push.ubports.com/notify", true);
req.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/json");
req.onreadystatechange = function() {
if ( req.readyState === XMLHttpRequest.DONE ) {
console.log("✍ Answer:", req.responseText);
}
}
var approxExpire = new Date ();
approxExpire.setUTCMinutes(approxExpire.getUTCMinutes()+10);
req.send(JSON.stringify({
"appid" : "appname.yourname_hookname",
"expire_on": approxExpire.toISOString(),
"token": "aAnqwiFn§DF%2",
"data": {
"notification": {
"card": {
"icon": "notification",
"summary": "Push Notification",
"body": "Hello world",
"popup": true,
"persist": true
},
"vibrate": true,
"sound": true
}
}
}));
Parameter |
Type |
Description |
|---|---|---|
appid |
string |
Required. ID of the application that will receive the notification,
as described in the client side documentation.
|
expire_on |
string |
Required. Expiration date/time for this message, in
|
token |
string |
Required. The token identifying the user+device to which the message is
directed, as described in the client side documentation.
|
clear_pending |
bool |
Discards all previous pending notifications. Usually in response to
getting a “too-many-pending” error. Defaults to false.
|
replace_tag |
string |
If there’s a pending notification with the same tag, delete it before
queuing this new one.
|
data |
Data |
A JSON object. The contents of the data field are arbitrary. We can use
it to send any data to the app.
|
Parameter |
Type |
Description |
|---|---|---|
notification |
Notification |
A JSON object which defines how this notification will be presented. |
message |
object |
A JSON object that is passed as-is to the application via PopAll. |
Parameter |
Type |
Description |
|---|---|---|
tag |
string |
The tag of the push notification.
|
sound |
bool or string |
This is either a boolean (play a predetermined sound) or the
path to a sound file. The user can disable it, so don’t rely
on it exclusively. Defaults to empty (no sound). The path is
relative, and will be looked up in (a) the application’s
.local/share/<pkgname>, and (b) standard xdg dirs. |
vibrate |
bool or Vibrate |
The notification can contain a vibrate field, causing haptic
feedback, which can be either a boolean (if true, vibrate a
predetermined way) or an Vibrate object.
|
emblem-counter |
Emblem-counter |
A JSON object, which defines how to display the emblem
counter.
|
card |
Card |
A JSON object with information about the notification card.
|
Parameter |
Type |
Description |
|---|---|---|
summary |
string |
Required. A title. The card will not be presented if this is
missing.
|
body |
string |
Longer text, defaults to empty.
|
actions |
array |
If empty (the default), a bubble notification is
non-clickable. If you add a URL, then bubble notifications
are clickable and launch that URL. One use for this is using
a URL like
appid://com.ubuntu.developer.ralsina.hellowhich will switch to the app or launch it.
|
icon |
string |
An icon relating to the event being notified. Defaults to
empty (no icon); a secondary icon relating to the application
will be shown as well, regardless of this field.
|
timestamp |
integer |
Seconds since the unix epoch, only used for persist for now.
If zero or unset, defaults to current timestamp.
|
persist |
bool |
Whether to show in notification centre; defaults to false.
|
popup |
bool |
Whether to show in a bubble. Users can disable this, and can
easily miss them, so don’t rely on it exclusively. Defaults
to false.
|
Parameter |
Type |
Description |
|---|---|---|
pattern |
array |
A list of integers describing a vibration pattern (duration of alternating
vibration/no vibration times, in milliseconds).
|
repeat |
integer |
Number of times the pattern has to be repeated (defaults to 1, 0 is the
same as 1).
|
Parameter |
Type |
Description |
|---|---|---|
count |
integer |
A number to be displayed over the application’s icon in the launcher. |
visible |
bool |
Set to true to show the counter, or false to hide it. |
User Metrics¶
What are User Metrics?¶
If you look on the lock screen, you will see a circle. Inside the circle is text. Look closer, and you’ll notice that the text contains data regarding the user’s activity. Double tap on the middle of the circle, and you will see more “metrics” about the user.
This shows “7 text messages sent today.” How did it know?¶
This is from a 3rd-party application (nCounter) that makes use of the User Metrics feature.¶
For the most part, these messages are quite clearly state what they are counting, and which app is related. But where do these metrics come from?
How can I use User Metrics in my application?¶
All of the following information will be based on the code for nCounter.
Your app’s apparmor file must include usermetrics in the policy:
{
"policy_groups": [
"usermetrics"
],
"policy_version": 16.04
}
Next, you will need to import the module in the QML file that will handle the User Metrics:
import UserMetrics 0.1
(There may be updated versions of this above 0.1)
Next, the specific Metric must be defined in the code as an object:
Metric { // Define the Metric object.
property string circleMetric // Create a string-type variable called "circleMetric". This is so you can update it later from somewhere else.
id: metric // A name to reference the metric elsewhere in the code. i.e. when updating format values below.
name: "nCounter" // This is a unique ID for storing the user metric data
format: circleMetric // This is the metric/message that will display "today". Again it uses the string variable that we defined above
emptyFormat: i18n.tr("Check nCounter") // This is the metric/message for tomorrow. It will "activate" once the day roles over and replaces "format". Here I have use a simple translatable string instead of a variable because I didn’t need it to change.
domain: "ncounter.joe" // This is the appname, based on what you have in your app settings. Presumably this is how the system lists/ranks the metrics to show on the lock screen.
}
Now that the metric is created, we can update the “format” or “emptyFormat” when an event takes place by referencing the variables in the Metric object.
onButtonPressed: {
metric.circleMetric = "New Metric Message"
metric.update(0)
console.log("Metric updated")
}
Here we assign a new value to the circleMetric string variable that’s inside the Metric object:
(Remember that circleMetric is the variable value assigned to format)
Metric Id [dot] Variable Name [equals] New variable information
metric.circleMetric = "New Metric Message"
We then tell the lock screen to update the metric.
Metric ID [dot] update (specific amount to set if included in the format)
metric.update(0)
(Note: In this example, 0 is arbitrary since the metric value doesn’t include a counter)
We have now updated the metric for today. When the time rolls over to tomorrow, the metric will be reset to whatever is in emptyFormat.
For most apps, this defaults to 0 counts for messages, calls, etc.
How do User Metrics work?¶
User Metrics are made up of two “formats”:
metrics/messages for today (
format)metrics/messages for tomorrow (
emptyFormat)
The value of emptyFormat is what displays on the lock screen when no value has been stored in format. In order to display a new value of format the metric must be updated.
There are two options for updating the metric:
Set the metric to a specific amount:
metricID.update(x) (where x is a number of type double to set for a counter value). metricID is the id: specified in the Metric item. The counter value can be included in the format setting by using %1. e.g. format: "%1 buttons pressed today"
Increment the metric:
metricID.increment(x) (where x is the amount to add to the current counter)
The metric will reset back to the value stored in emptyFormat each day.
Applications make use of User Metrics by setting and updating the “formats” whenever a certain event takes place. e.g. When you press send in Telegram, or when you receive a phone call. The application may store the data for manipulation, but generally the data is stored in the system (/var/lib/usermetrics).
(See this blog post for a simple example)
Limitations and wonders¶
Once a metric is registered, it remains on the lock screen even after the app has been uninstalled. A database file (db) is stored in /var/lib/usermetrics, which can be deleted by root (but not with sudo). Deleting this file and rebooting will remove all stored metrics. Presumably, the db file could be edited instead of deleted.
Based on how the “formats” are set up, it seems that it is difficult to maintain a running tally beyond one day (though not impossible. See FluffyChat).
In the case of the nCounter app. I wanted to count the number of days, but since the metric “resets” each day, that presents a problem. I created a workaround that updates the metric every time the application is opened. Thus, the emptyFormat (default) tells the user to open the application. This, however, nearly defeats the purpose of the metric entirely, other than having a neat stat reminder for the day.
There must be a way for a process to run independently in the background (e.g. cron) to retrieve data from a specific app code. One lead is the Indicator Weather app. This runs a process every X minutes to update the weather indicator automatically without having to open the app.
Writable directories¶
App confinement is part of the Ubuntu Touch security concept. Data can be exchanged between apps only according to the AppArmor policies, mainly using the ContentHub. This being said, apps can only read and write files that are located in one of three app specific directories explained in this guide.
Standard Paths¶
Besides the write access to the app directories explained below, the app can write debug messages into the app log file located at /home/phablet/.cache/upstart/application-click-<fullappname>_<appname>_<version>.log. To append messages to the log file, use the Qt debug functions.
Path: /home/phablet/.config/<fullappname>/
This is the place to store configurations files to. The music app for example stores its configuration to /home/phablet/.config/com.ubuntu.music/com.ubuntu.music.conf.
Path: /home/phablet/.cache/<fullappname>/
This is the place to cache data for later use. The cache is also used by the Content Hub. Files that have been shared with the music app for example can be found in /home/phablet/.cache/com.ubuntu.music/HubIncoming/.
Path: /home/phablet/.local/share/<fullappname>/
This is where your app stores any data. The music app for example stores its data bases to /home/phablet/.local/share/com.ubuntu.music/Databases/.
Using Standard Paths in C++¶
The Qt header QStandardPaths provides the app’s writable locations in C++:
#include <QStandardPaths>
...
QString configPath = QStandardPaths::writableLocation(QStandardPaths::AppConfigLocation);
QString cachePath = QStandardPaths::writableLocation(QStandardPaths::CacheLocation);
QString appDataPath = QStandardPaths::writableLocation(QStandardPaths::AppDataLocation);
...
Since the value of the QStandardPaths strings are decided by the Qt application name, this needs to be the same as the clickable application name.
Using Standard Paths in QML¶
The Qt module Qt.labs.platform provides the app’s writable locations in QML:
import Qt.labs.platform 1.0
...
Label
{
text: StandardPaths.writableLocation(StandardPaths.AppConfigLocation)
}
Label
{
text: StandardPaths.writableLocation(StandardPaths.CacheLocation)
}
Label
{
text: StandardPaths.writableLocation(StandardPaths.AppDataLocation)
}
...
Notice that QStandardPaths returns paths ('/phablet/home/...'), and QML StandardPaths returns urls ('file:///phablet/home/...'). This must be considered specially if the app is sharing location strings between QML and C++.
Handle C++ dependencies with Clickable¶
If an app depends on a library that is not pre-installed in Ubuntu Touch, the app needs to ship it inside the click package. This guide shows how this can be done with Clickable.
Building¶
Sometimes libraries are available pre-built, allowing you to skip the build step. Compiling your dependency is recommended though, as it gives you more control over the whole process and may lead to better results (e.g. better performance or smaller package sizes).
Put the library’s source code at libs/LIBNAME (replacing LIBNAME by the library’s name), because this is where clickable will look for it by default. If the dependency source code is available as a git repository, it is a good idea to add it as a git submodule. Otherwise add a script to download the sources.
Add a libraries section to your clickable.json, like this:
{
"builder": "cmake",
"libraries": {
"LIBNAME": {
"builder": "cmake"
}
}
}
If the library does not contain a CMake configuration, you need to use the qmake or custom builder instead.
Optionally, configure the compilation by adding build_args, which may look like this:
{
"builder": "cmake",
"libraries": {
"LIBNAME": {
"builder": "cmake",
"build_args": [
"-DBUILD_EXAMPLES=OFF",
"-DBUILD_DOCS=OFF",
"-DBUILD_TESTS=OFF",
"-DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF"
]
}
}
}
Most build arguments are project specific. Therefore, study the library’s build instructions and also look for option settings in its CMakeLists.txt .
To actually build the library for all architectures run clickable build-libs --arch armhf, clickable build-libs --arch arm64 and clickable build-libs --arch amd64. Don’t forget to mention this step in your README, so that others can reproduce the build process.
See how Teleports clickable.json uses the libraries feature to build its dependency tdlib.
If you compiled your library as described above, skip this step.
A pre-built library is usually only available as a shared object that needs to be linked dynamically. Furthermore, it may contain components that you don’t need, resulting in a bloated app. It may even miss something that you could achieve by compiling it yourself. Sometimes, a library is available in the Ubuntu Repositories, but is not installable for the architecture you need (likely armhf or arm64). In this case you have to compile the library as described above.
If the library is available in the Ubuntu Repositories, you can add it to the dependencies list, like this:
{
"builder": "cmake",
"dependencies_target": [
"libsomething-dev"
]
}
Clickable will install the specified package automatically for the target architecture inside the build container. An example can be found in Guitar Tools’ clickable.json.
If the library can be found in a PPA, you can add the PPA to the clickable.json, too. For example:
{
"builder": "cmake",
"dependencies_ppa": [
"ppa:someone/libsomething"
],
"dependencies_target": [
"libsomething-dev"
]
}
Otherwise add a script to download the pre-built library.
Usage¶
First, you need to specify the include directory where the headers can be found that you include into the app’s source code. Second, you need to link the library’s binary against your app’s binary.
In case the library contains a CMake configuration file, you can use the find_package command, which provides you with a target to link against or variables pointing to the library’s binary and include directories. The additional lines on your CMakeLists.txt then may look like:
find_package(SOMELIBRARY REQUIRED)
include_directories(${SOMELIBRARY_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_link_libraries(mytarget ${SOMELIBRARY_LIBS})
The find_package command usually defines the path to the include directory as SOMELIBRARY_INCLUDE_DIRS and the library’s binaries as SOMELIBRARY_LIBS (check on the library’s documentation on what their CMake configuration provides exactly). Use them with the include_directories and target_link_libraries commands. See the Camera Scanner ImageProcessing CMakeLists.txt for a real world example.
At this point you should already be able to test with Clickable’s desktop mode running clickable desktop.
Deployment¶
If you linked the library statically, you can skip this step, as the library’s binary is already inside your app’s binary.
Find out which shared object files (*.so) you need to ship. You can do so by starting the app on your device via clickable && clickable logs. You should see an error message telling you which shared object file was missing.
Find the path to the shared object files. For libraries built via clickable, they are located somewhere in the library’s install dir, which is located inside the library’s build dir by default (e.g. build/arm-linux-gnueabihf/opencv/install). For pre-built libraries run clickable run "find / -name 'libSomething.so'" (replacing libSomething.so by the file your are looking for). This should print the path to the file (along with some error messages you can ignore). In general, /usr/lib is a good bet when looking for the shared object files.
To get the files into the click package, add the install_lib key to your clickable.json:
{
"builder": "cmake",
"libraries": {
"LIBNAME": {
"builder": "cmake",
"install_lib": [
"$LIBNAME_LIB_INSTALL_DIR/usr/lib/$ARCHITECTURE_TRIPLET/libqmapboxgl.so*",
"/usr/lib/$ARCHITECTURE_TRIPLET/libSoundTouch.so.*"
]
}
}
}
The lines above contain two examples. The first one installing a library built with Clickable. The asterisk in .so* helps to catch symbolic links along with the actual library which are used to point to the current version.
Depending on the library, you might need to ship some additional data. In that case consult the library’s readme or install instructions.
You should be set up to build and install your click package on a device connected to your computer now by running clickable.
Playground¶
In a completely free and open source community, it is natural to have community members exploring the limits of the platform in many many directions. In this section you will find links to external resources that do exactly that: Explore. The purpose of this list is to show the unlimited possibilities of an open platform like Ubuntu Touch.
Note
The resources listed here do not necessarily represent the officially endorsed way of developing applications for Ubuntu Touch, but are interesting experiments.
API docs¶
In this section you find the various APIs you can use to develop Ubuntu Touch apps.
Firstly there are the QML and HTML APIs that you can use for the front end:
Secondly, the platform documentation describes how to integrate your app into the system:
Platform¶
Here are Ubuntu Touch platforms key topics when you want to extend your app with Ubuntu Touch ecosystem:
- Content Hub
Each application can expose content outside its sandbox, giving the user precise control over what can be imported, exported or shared with the world and other apps.
- Push notifications
By using a push server and a companion client, instantly serve users with the latest information from their network and apps.
- URL dispatcher
Help users navigate between your apps and drive their journey with the URL dispatcher.
- Online accounts
Simplify user access to online services by integrating with the online accounts API. Accounts added by the user on the device are registered in a centralized hub, allowing other apps to re-use them.
Packaging your app¶
Here you will get some informations about the confinment model and the packaging system:
Every click application package must embed at least 3 files:
manifest.jsonfileContains application declarations such as application name, description, author, framework sdk target, and version.
Example
manifest.jsonfile:{ "name": "myapp.author", "title": "App Title", "version": "0.1" "description": "Description of the app", "framework": "ubuntu-sdk-16.04", "maintainer": "xxxx <xxx@xxxx>", "hooks": { "myapp": { "apparmor": "apparmor.json", "desktop": "app.desktop" } } }
- AppArmor profile policy file
Contains which policy the app needs to work properly. See Security and app isolation below for more information on this file.
.desktopfileThe launcher file will tell UT how to launch the app, which name and icon to display on the home screen, and some other properties.
Example of
app.desktop:[Desktop Entry] Name=Application title Exec=qmlscene qml/Main.qml Icon=assets/logo.svg Terminal=false Type=Application X-Ubuntu-Touch=true
Non exhaustive list of properties:
Name: Application title has shown in the dash
Exec: Path to the executable file
Icon: Path to the icon to display
Terminal:
falseif will not run in terminal windowType: Specifies the type of the launcher file. The type can be Application, Link or Directory.
X-Ubuntu-Touch:
trueto make the app visibleX-Ubuntu-XMir-Enable:
trueif your app is built for XX-Ubuntu-Supported-Orientations:
landscapeorportraitto force your app start in landscape mode and portrait mode respectively.
All Ubuntu apps are confined respecting AppArmor access control mechanism (see Application Confinement) , meaning they only have access to their own resources and are isolated from other apps and parts of the system. The developer must declare which policy groups are needed for the app or scope to function properly with an apparmor .json file.
Example apparmor.json file:
{
"policy_version": 16.04,
"policy_groups": [
"networking",
"webview",
"content_exchange"
]
}
For a full list of available policy groups, see AppArmor Policy Groups.
This document contains a full list of Ubuntu Touch’s available policy groups and a description of what they give your app permission to access.
Each entry follows this format
Title
-----
Description: Description from apparmor file
Usage: How common it is to use this policy (from apparmor file)
Optional longer description
Policy usage affects whether your app will be accepted by the OpenStore. Apps containing policies with common usage are generally accepted immediately, while reserved usage policies will need to be manually reviewed.
Note
Coding tip: Everytime you change your apparmor policy file you need to update your app’s version for this to be taken into account.
Description: Can use Online Accounts.
Usage: common
The accounts policy gives your app the permissions it needs to access the Online Accounts API.
Description: Can play audio (allows playing remote content via media-hub)
Usage: common
The audio policy is needed for your app to play audio via pulseaudio or media-hub. The permission also gives it the ability to send album art to the thumbnailer service, which is then shown on the sound indicator.
Description: Use bluetooth (bluez5) as an administrator.
Usage: reserved
This policy grants unrestricted access to Bluetooth devices. It is provided for administration of bluetooth and as a stepping stone towards developing a safe bluetooth API all apps can access.
Description: Can access the calendar.
Usage: reserved
Calendar grants access to the Evolution dataserver’s calendar and alarms APIs. It also grants access to sync-monitor.
This policy is reserved since it grants free access to all calendars on the device at any time. The legacy bug about this situation is LP #1227824 .
Description: Can access the camera(s)
Usage: common
The camera policy grants access to device cameras.
Description: Can access coarse network connectivity information
Usage: common
The connectivity policy allows apps to determine rough information about the device’s connectivity. This includes whether the device is connected to the Internet and whether it is connected via a Wi-Fi or mobile data connection.
Description: Can access contacts.
Usage: reserved
The contacts policy allows apps to access the device user’s contacts list. It is marked as reserved because it allows access to sync-monitor and unfettered access to the address book.
Description: Can request/import data from other applications
Usage: common
Using the content_exchange policy allows your app to be a consumer of content on content-hub.
Description: Can provide/export data to other applications
Usage: common
The content_exchange_source policy allows your app to provide content on content-hub.
Description: Use special debugging tools. This should only be used in development and not for production packages. Note: use of this policy group provides significantly different confinement than normal and is not considered secure. You should never run untrusted programs using this policy group.
Usage: reserved
Description: Can read and write to document files. This policy group is reserved for certain applications, such as document viewers. Developers should typically use the content_exchange policy group and API to access document files instead.
Usage: reserved
This policy allows apps to read and write to the “Documents” folders in the user’s home directory and external media.
Description: Can read all document files. This policy group is reserved for certain applications, such as document viewers. Developers should typically use the content_exchange policy group and API to access document files instead.
Usage: reserved
This policy allows apps to read the “Documents” folders in the user’s home directory and external media.
Description: Can access the history-service. This policy group is reserved for vetted applications only in this version of the policy. A future version of the policy may move this out of reserved status.
Usage: reserved
Description: Can request keeping the screen on
Usage: common
Description: Can access Location
Usage: common
Allows an app to request access to the device’s current location.
Description: Can access the microphone
Usage: common
Description: Can read and write to music files. This policy group is reserved for certain applications, such as music players. Developers should typically use the content_exchange policy group and API to access music files instead.
Usage: reserved
The music_files policy group allows an app to read or write to the Music directories in the user’s home folder or on external media.
Description: Can read all music files. This policy group is reserved for certain applications, such as music players. Developers should typically use the content_exchange policy group and API to access music files instead.
Usage: reserved
The music_files_read policy group allows an app to read the Music directories in the user’s home folder or on external media.
Description: Can access the network
Usage: common
The networking policy group allows an app to contact network devices and use the download manager.
Description: Can access the NFC functionality
Usage: common
The nfc policy group allows an app to read and write NFC tags via NDEF data as well as establishing a peer-to-peer connection between two devices.
Description: Can read and write to picture files. This policy group is reserved for certain applications, such as gallery applications. Developers should typically use the content_exchange policy group and API to access picture files instead.
Usage: reserved
The picture_files policy group allows an app to read and write to the Pictures directories in the user’s home folder or on external media.
Description: Can read all picture files. This policy group is reserved for certain applications, such as gallery applications. Developers should typically use the content_exchange policy group and API to access picture files instead.
Usage: reserved
The picture_files_read policy group allows an app to read the Pictures directories in the user’s home folder or on external media.
Description: Can use push notifications as a client
Usage: common
Description: Can access the sensors
Usage: common
Allows apps to access device sensors
Description: Can use UserMetrics to update the InfoGraphic
Usage: common
Allows an app to write metrics to the UserMetrics service so they can be displayed on the InfoGraphic.
Description: Can play video (allows playing remote content via media-hub)
Usage: common
Description: Can read and write to video files. This policy group is reserved for certain applications, such as gallery applications. Developers should typically use the content_exchange policy group and API to access video files instead.
Usage: reserved
The video_files policy group allows an app to read and write to the Videos directories in the user’s home folder or on external media.
Description: Can read all video files. This policy group is reserved for certain applications, such as gallery applications. Developers should typically use the content_exchange policy group and API to access video files instead.
Usage: reserved
The video_files_read policy group allows an app to read the Videos directories in the user’s home folder or on external media.
Description: Can use the UbuntuWebview
Usage: common
The webview policy group allows apps to embed a web browser view.
Thirdly, it is possible to develop cross-platform apps that don’t depend on Ubuntu specific APIs, although this is not the official way of developing apps for Ubuntu Touch. If running on other operating systems is a requirement for your app, you can refer to these APIs instead:
This is a helpful and welcoming community and everything works better in teamwork! Looking for other developers that might want to collaborate with you on your app? Have questions that aren’t answered in the docs or want to chat with other Ubuntu Touch developers? Join our UBports UT App Dev Telegram group or chat with us on the UBports App Development forum! You can also check out our list of preinstalled apps. Contributions to those are greatly appreciated and directly reach a larger audience.
Maintainers wanted¶
All apps love contributions. But some core apps are lacking maintainers. Please check the list of core apps and see if you want to step up as new maintainer for one of our core apps. The maintainer reviews MR’s, triages and investigates issue reports and helps to develop the app.
The best way to start is by making some contributions and let the reviewers know that you are interested. Or join our matrix group at #ubcd:matrix.org and introduce yourself.
Human interface guidelines¶
Ubuntu Touch follows a clean, beautiful, modern and (above all) convergent design. We aim to keep developing the design started by Canonical.
Design concepts¶
As designed by Canonical, we use the following system palette (from Michał Prędotka and Ubuntu documentation):
Operating system and app palette¶
#FFFFFF White
Recommended for background on Ambiance theme (light theme) or regular text on Suru Dark theme.
#111111 Jet
Recommended for regular text on Ambiance theme or background in Suru Dark.
#3B3B3B Inkstone
Recommended for foreground colours in dark themes.
#5D5D5D Slate
Recommended for text and action icons.
#666666 Graphite
Recommended for coloring dark themes’ background.
#888888 Ash
Recommended for subtitles and other tertiary content.
#CDCDCD Silk
Recommended for neutral action buttons and secondary text.
#F7F7F7 Porcelain
Recommended for foregrounds.
#335280 Blue
Recommended for progress bars, selected areas, text selection and text cursor. Also neutral actions (Ambiance).
#19B6EE Light Blue
Recommended for progress bars, selected areas, text selection and text cursor. Also neutral actions (SuruDark).
#0E8420 Green
Recommended for positive action buttons (Ambiance).
#3EB34F Light Green
Recommended for positive action buttons (SuruDark).
#C7162B Red
Recommended for negative and irreversible action buttons, errors and alerts (Ambiance).
#ED3146 Light Red
Recommended for negative and irreversible action buttons, errors and alerts (SuruDark).
#E95420 Orange
Orange is recommended for branded elements, focus and intensity.
Units¶
Resolution Independence Approach¶
The objective of resolution independence is to make it easy for graphical user interfaces in Ubuntu Touch to scale to all the form factors that Ubuntu Touch targets: phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. The approach taken combines simplicity for the designers and developers with visual fidelity, quality and usability.
Measurement Units¶
Grid Unit¶
A measurement unit called the grid unit is defined, abbreviated gu. 1 grid unit translates to a given number of pixels depending on the type of screen that the user interface is displayed on. For example, on a laptop computer 1 grid unit will typically translate to 8 pixels. The number of pixels per grid unit is chosen in order to preserve the perceived visual size of UI elements and therefore depends on the density of the display and the distance the user is to the screen. We also ensure that 1 grid unit is always an integer number of pixel.
Device |
Conversion |
|---|---|
Most laptops |
1 gu = 8 px |
High DPI laptops |
1 gu = 16 px |
Phone with 4 inch screen at HD resolution (around 720x1,280 pixels) |
1 gu = 18 px |
Tablet with 10 inch screen at HD resolution (around 720x1,280 pixels) |
1 gu = 10 px |
Density Unit¶
Exceptionally, in order to accommodate for the rare cases where measurements of less than 1 gu are needed another unit is available: the density independent pixel, abbreviated dp. 1 dp typically translates to 1 pixel on laptops and low density mobile phones and tablets.
Use¶
Item {
width: units.gu(2)
height: units.dp(1)
}
Device Sizes¶
Device Grid Units |
width |
height |
|---|---|---|
E5 (portrait) |
42 |
72 |
M10 HD (landscape) |
160 |
97 |
M10 FHD (landscape) |
148 |
89 |
N5 (portrait) |
47 |
80 |
Typography¶
Fonts¶
Our default font is Ubuntu [2] installed in the system.
For the font sizes to be consistent across devices, instead of setting the font size as a number of pixels or points, it is imperative to define the font size in terms of size names:
Font Size Name |
gu |
Desktop |
Phone |
Tablet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
4” HD Screen |
10” HD screen |
|||
x-small |
1.25 |
10 px |
22 px |
12 px |
small |
1.5 |
12 px |
27 px |
15 px |
medium |
1.75 |
14 px |
31 px |
18 px |
large |
2.5 |
20 px |
45 px |
25 px |
x-large |
3.5 |
34 px |
76 px |
42 px |
App icon design¶
The whole system and apps follow the Suru design principles started by Canonical and Samuel Hewitt.
Design Philosophy and Suru Meaning¶
Suru alludes to Japanese culture.
The design of Suru is inspired by origami.
Paper can be used in two and three dimensional forms, because it is transferable and diverse.
Suru brings a precise yet organic structure to the Ubuntu Touch interface. The sharp lines and varying levels of transparency evoke the edges and texture of paper.
Design Tips for an App Icon¶
Descriptive design¶
The icon you choose for your app should describe what your app is about, what it does, or what service it is there for in a recognizable way.
Distinctive shapes¶
Depending on the object you choose to show in the icon, on the perspective, lighting and other factors, it might be hard to recognize what you are trying to depict. A TV might look like a box, or a computer screen, a remote control like a phone, etc.
Details¶
A detailed icon is very nice to look at as it shows quality and your eye for the small things. It might add confusion though, especially in smaller sizes or for people who have impaired eyesight. Show what’s necessary, pay attention to detail, but don’t overload the icon.
Colours¶
Use distinctive colours, make your icon stand out a bit and give the shapes enough contrast to be visible.
If you were to add a gradient to your icon, only use colours that are slightly different from each other so that the change is not too dramatic. For example:
Composition¶
Suru icons are composed of simple geometric shapes. The background is usually a coloured surface with the pictogram, also composed of flat shapes, “floating” above it.
The Fold Effect¶
In keeping with the origami motif, some Suru icons have an implied fold. In many icons this is a single horizontal or vertical line but sometimes the fold line(s) correspond or align with elements of the pictogram.
The fold is drawn by creating an overlay of a white or black polygon of very low opacity (usually between 1%~10%).
Grids¶
Using a grid layout ensures consistency across all icons and will force you to reserve area for the icon background for even padding around the pictogram.
Note that the circular elements are slightly larger than rectangular elements of the grid, this overshoot is needed to compensate for the optical illusion where circular objects appear smaller than rectangular objects of the same dimensions.
Unit Grid¶
Designing with an overall pixel grid in mind is crucial to having crisp, clean icons. Since most desktop icons have dimensions that are a factor of four (16x16, 24x24, 32x32, 48x48, 256x256) using a pixel grid with lines every 4 pixels and drawing to that grid is the best practice.
Shadows¶
Often a Suru icon is drawn with two distinct sets of shadows, one for the pictogram to create a drop shadow effect, and a second below the overall icon shape.
The drop shadow effect on the central pictogram is a combination of two shadow that are identical in shape to the pictogram:
a shape that is rgba(0,0,0,0.1) with vertical offset of 2 pixels and a blur of 1%
a shape that is rgba(0,0,0,0.4) with vertical offset of 4 pixels and a blur of 10%
If the fold effect is present, the second shadow is drawn using a linear gradient with three stops whose positions correspond to the location of the background fold.
Highlights¶
Pictograms have an ever~so~slight (1 pixel) white highlight along the top edge of them. To do this, make 2 solid white copies of the main pictogram shape and move one copy 1 pixel down and ‘difference’ the two so what’s left is an ‘edge’ that you can align to the top of the pictogram. Repeat as needed.
Depending on the colour of your pictogram element, you can vary the opacity of your highlight. For instance, if it is using bright, primary colours, there isn’t any need for a highlight.
Grids and other resources can be found in this gitlab repository.
In-app icons design¶
Interface Icons¶
Interface icons communicate either status or action displays, such as battery level or an alarm, whilst also enabling the user to perform actions like opening a menu, sharing content or print a document. The interface icons are located in the top bar or in-app icons, such as in the Header or the menus.
See a list of the icons. available in the system.
Color¶
Interface icons can be colourized in qml therefore are designed in #808080 color.
Font¶
To provide a consistent look to the UI and to make the Suru icons distinctive, the design is based on the same patterns as the Ubuntu font. The font patterns can applied to the symbol to define its contours.
Strokes¶
Stroke ends are squared but the upper end of vertical strokes is slightly oblique with a +10º angle.
Rotation¶
When they are not horizontal or vertical, objects are oriented along a +45º axis.
Corners¶
Curved corners are preferred if possible. The following picture shows a zoom on the default outer and inner curvatures, with nodes and Bezier handle. The default curvature can be scaled down when the shape is smaller.
Arrows¶
A chevron symbol is used for navigation arrows. The arrowhead is an isosceles triangle where the two equal sides are slightly curved (following the pattern of the Y character).
Opacity¶
50% opacity is used to reflect the status of an indicator. In case of a double space (enabled and disabled, for example), the opacity of the whole icon changes. When the status allows a range of values, the opacity of a single portion of icon can be altered.
Grid¶
Interface icons are designed for 96x96 pixels, with at least 4 pixels of margin on every side.
App layout¶
App main view¶
When an app starts, shows a generic splash screen (as in the image) or a custom one, then the main view.
The standard parts of a main view or any other page may be:
Header¶
Display app name, leading area and trailing area icons.
In this case, showing title and trailing actions.
Tabbed content¶
To organize information under tabs.
Bottom edge menu¶
For quick actions. See Quick actions.
Header uses¶
App headers can be used to show app name, app section or page, search box, or other globally accessible functions.
Some special apps doesn’t show any header, like the Camera app or some games.
The header takes care of showing the back button when a page stack is used.
Main actions¶
Main actions are displayed in the corresponding header of the Page. The header should show only relevant actions to the current page.
Main page of Contacts app shows:
When viewing a single contact, only relevant actions are shown:
Slots¶
The header contains a number of slots that can hold actions or navigational options. Depending on the surface or window size, additional slots can be added to show the actions otherwise hidden in drawers.
Action Drawer¶
Actions will be placed into an action drawer when there are no available slots to house them. However, when your app is on a larger surface, like on a desktop, then actions will appear in the slots.
Responsive layout¶
As the header gains width across screen sizes, additional slots become visible and actions in the drawer will appear automatically.
3 slot layout¶
4 slot layout¶
5 slot layout¶
6 slot layout¶
Medium to large screens¶
The maximum number of visible action slots in a convergent environment is 6. If this is exceeded then additional actions will migrate to the action drawer.
Simple¶
Keep in mind to keep a clean design. The simpler, the better.
Quick actions¶
The most common action for an app, the one that needs to be accessed quickly might be added as a bottom edge action, accessed with a swipe from outside of the screen upwards.
You can add a new contact in the Contacts app swiping up:
Hint¶
The hint is used to let the user know that there is something worth trying at the bottom of the screen.
After opening an app, a hint with a text and/or an icon is shown:
After after a few seconds it hides and a floating icon is shown
Importing Data¶
Interchange of data between apps is done through Content Hub. This improves isolation between apps.
Apps with the appropriate apparmor permissions can import, export or share data between them.
For more information see Importing from Content Hub and URLdispatcher.
Presenting data¶
List Items¶
List items can be used to make up a list of ordered scrollable items that are related to each other.
When images or icons are presented without text or actions, it would make more sense to show them inside a grid rather than a list; like in a photo gallery.
Items in a list can have actions that can be placed in a context menu. The context menu can be accessed in two ways: by swiping or right-clicking the list item.
The actions are placed within two categories: leading for negative actions and trailing for positive actions.
Touch swiping¶
Mouse right click¶
Keyboard navigation¶
Lists in edit mode¶
Edit mode allows users to modify a particular item or multiple items at once.
You can use edit mode to allow users to multi-select, rearrange or delete items inside a list. When edit mode is entered the whole screen becomes an edit state and the header will show associated editing actions for the content. Alternatively, if the user long presses an item a context menu will show the associated editing actions too.
Layout of detailed list items¶
1 line – Title
1 line – Subtitle
2 lines – Summary
Dialogs¶
A dialog is a way of informing the user about important notices or letting them complete a single action.
Dialogs should be unambiguous and concise in their wording. Only the most common, or main, action should be highlighted with color. The main action should be placed topmost in vertical dialogs or rightmost in horizontal dialogs.
Main actions may be positive, negative, or neutral. Positive actions add something to their subjects. Negative actions remove, delete, or otherwise make changes that can’t be easily undone. Neutral actions do not add or remove from the subject, but still make a change.
The main action should be highlighted using theme.palette.normal.negative if it is destructive, theme.palette.normal.positive if it is positive, or theme.palette.normal.focus if it is neutral. The remaining options should be gray, without defining a color theme property.
Dialogs should resume actions, not ask a yes or no question. For example, the user has selected an option to delete a contact. Your dialog should ask, “Are you sure you would like to delete this contact?” The options should then be “Delete”, a negative action colored in red, and “Cancel”, colored in gray.
Examples of designs to avoid¶
Left: Download button uses old focus color, Cancel button (secondary action) uses old grey color.
Right: Dialog uses generic answers, both buttons colored as main actions with confusing color meaning: “Will ‘No’ cause an irreversible action, and ‘Yes’ cause an additive action?”
Other design considerations¶
Convergence¶
Convergence is one of the milestones Ubuntu Touch wants to achieve. One app available across all screen sizes and input methods, such as mobile handsets, tablets, and laptops.
Convergence refers to the ability to use the same code base across multiple hardware form factors. Multiple devices using the same code base allows for features to be developed once, then shipped on multiple device types. This reducing development time and cost. The goal is for Ubuntu Touch to provide a consistent experience, whether you are using it on a big screen with mouse and keyboard or on a small touchscreen.
Screen size¶
Ubuntu Touch Tweak Tool app¶
Main page stays as the main page on phones or on the left on bigger screen devices. Additional pages on the phone, can be displayed at variable sizes on the right on bigger screens.
Input method¶
Using touch, a user can swipe or long-press on a list item to reveal a contextual menu. Using a pointer (mouse or trackpad) a user can right-click the item to reveal the contextual menu. Using a keyboard a user can focus the desired item and press the MENU key to open the context menu.
Scaling images¶
Scaling images is important in a convergent app. App icons and images can be created in scalable formats to improve their ability to scale.
One of the most popular scalable formats is SVG. SVG files can be created using software like Inkscape.
One particularity of qml, though, is that SVGs are rendered to use less memory, losing the advantages of scalability. When using a SVG file in an Image element we can use the property called sourceSize. This will define the rendered size of the SVG image. A SVG image with a sourceSize width and height of 252 pixels, will be rendered as if the scalable image would be a png of 252 per 252 pixels.
Different rendered sizes of the same svg image¶
It is not advisable to define sourceSize as a relative size to avoid performance issues. A good practice is defining sourceSize based on a set list of thresholds. In the example below the image.svg will be rendered 60 per 60 grid units if the main view is bigger that 70 grid units but as an image of 40 per 40 grid units in the other cases. By defining these thresholds, we get scalable images without a huge performance cost.
Image {
source: "image.svg"
sourceSize.width: mainView.width > units.gu(70) ? units.gu(60) : units.gu(40)
sourceSize.height: sourceSize.width
}
Read more about image performance in the Qt wiki.
Accessibility¶
Accessibility is important to make all users to be able to use the operating system.
Inclusive palette and theme¶
We would like to create and implement color palettes helpful to people who have sight impairment:
Additional palette proposal.
A high contrast theme.
Adaptable font size theme.
Input methods¶
Apps should be accessible using any combination of mouse, touch, and keyboard.
Translations¶
Adding translations to your app makes it more accessible to international users. Clickable will handle this process automatically, extracting new translatable strings into a pot file (the source strings of your app, to be translated).
Marking a string to be translatable can be achieved like this i18n.tr(string). For example:
Label {
text: i18n.tr("My Label")
}
More information and options can be found in this a bit outdated tutorial on localization an app.
System software development¶
This section has various documents which will teach you how to work with the system level of Ubuntu Touch. This includes the Kernel, Android HAL, Ubuntu UI Toolkit, Unity8, and all of the other software that makes Ubuntu Touch what it is.
This section does not cover most of the applications preinstalled on Ubuntu Touch. See Preinstalled apps for more information on those.
Kernel and hardware abstraction¶
This page documents the resources and processes to build the kernel and hardware abstraction for UT devices. This document is useful if you would like to work on:
A hardware related issue (camera, sensors, radios)
A Linux kernel related issue
An issue related to the system-image upgrade process
This document is not useful if you would like to modify Preinstalled apps or System software. See the respective documentation for each.
There are a few different groups of Ubuntu Touch devices with respect to how the kernel and hardware abstraction is implemented:
Android 5.1 based ports
Halium based ports
Linux kernel
hammerhead, bacon and FP2¶
This page documents how to build the Kernel and the Android image for the LG Nexus 5 (hammerhead), OnePlus One (bacon), or Fairphone 2 (FP2).
Note
We highly suggest that you follow the Halium porting guide if you want to bring up a new device. The steps in here are only relevant for hammerhead, bacon and FP2.
This document assumes you already have knowledge of building Android or Halium. It also assumes that your device has Ubuntu Touch installed.
Getting set up¶
ubp-5.1 ports must be built using Ubuntu 16.04. A container or virtual machine based on 16.04 is recommended for this purpose.
Let’s get started by installing some build dependencies:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 && sudo apt update
sudo apt install schedtool gcc g++ g++-multilib zlib1g-dev:i386 \
zip libxml2-utils bc python-launchpadlib phablet-tools
Create a directory for your ubp-5.1 source:
mkdir ~/ubp-5.1
cd ~/ubp-5.1
Next, we’ll initialize the repository:
repo init -u https://github.com/ubports/android -b ubp-5.1-allthefixings --depth=1
Note
The allthefixings branch is provided for convenience. It adds all of the current UT device ports to the tree at the expense of a bit more downloaded data. If you are download-sensitive, initialize using -b ubp-5.1 and use the manifest in build-scripts to pick the repos you like.
Finally, we’ll download the source:
repo sync -j10 -c
Set up and build¶
With the sources downloaded, we need to set up our environment and build the images. Make sure you’re in your ubp-5.1 directory to continue through these steps.
First, bring in the default Android build environment:
source build/envsetup.sh
Run lunch and pick the appropriate combo for your device. The name of the combination should start with cm_, followed by the device name and ending with -userdebug:
lunch
With that done, the build can be started:
mka
Install the new image¶
Now that the build is complete, we can flash it to the device. Note that all of these commands should be run from a terminal which has been set up with source build/envsetup.sh and lunch to ensure the needed tools are in your PATH.
We’ll begin with the boot and recovery images. Boot your device into fastboot mode and run the following commands:
cout
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
Now boot your device to ensure your kernel build is sane. You may also want to boot into recovery to ensure it is working as well.
To install your new build of the system image, use the replace-android-system script. It can be run as follows with your device attached:
./replace-android-system system.img
PinePhone and PineTab kernel¶
This document describes how to build and install the PinePhone or PineTab kernel. First the recovery system is explained. Then the actual building and installation. At the bottom there are some references.
Recovery¶
The Ubuntu Touch image contains a recovery boot mode based on “jumpdrive”. To get into the recovery press and hold the power and volume-up buttons until the led turns on.
The recovery presents the PinePhone as a network device over USB and runs a telnet server.
When you connect the PinePhone to your desktop via USB, you will see the rndis device show up in your desktop’s dmesg:
usb 1-7.2: Product: PinePhone
usb 1-7.2: Manufacturer: Pine64
usb 1-7.2: SerialNumber: Jumpdrive
rndis_host 1-7.2:1.0 usb0: register 'rndis_host' at usb-0000:00:14.0-7.2, RNDIS device
You can log in to the recovery system with telnet 172.16.42.1.
The recovery also exposes the eMMC and the microSD card over USB. Assuming you have already installed Ubuntu Touch on your microSD card you will see something like this in your desktop’s dmesg:
usb-storage 1-7.2:1.2: USB Mass Storage device detected
scsi host3: usb-storage 1-7.2:1.2
scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access JumpDriv e eMMC PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
scsi 2:0:0:1: Direct-Access JumpDriv e microSD PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
scsi 2:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 30785536 512-byte logical blocks: (15.8 GB/14.7 GiB)
sd 2:0:0:1: [sdc] 124735488 512-byte logical blocks: (63.9 GB/59.5 GiB)
sdb: sdb1 sdb2
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
sdc: sdc1 sdc2 sdc3 sdc4 sdc5 sdc6 sdc7 sdc8 sdc9 sdc10
The eMMC with jumpdrive contains two partitions: pmOS_boot and pmOS_root.
The microSD card with Ubuntu Touch contains 10 partitions: loader, scr, persist, boot_a, boot_b, recovery_a, recovery_b, cache, system and userdata. To update the kernel you want to mount boot_a. Check which device is the SDcard in your OS and mount boot_a. In the example above this is sdc4. Inside that partition you’ll see the kernel vmlinuz and related files: config-5.6.0-pine64 dtb initrd.img modules/ System.map-5.6.0-pine64 vmlinuz.
Building the kernel¶
To install dependencies, get the source code, configure and build the kernel, run the following:
sudo apt install build-essential flex bison gcc-aarch64-linux-gnu libssl-dev
git clone -b pine64-kernel-ubports https://gitlab.com/pine64-org/linux.git
cd linux
ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- KBUILD_VERSION=arm64 LOCALVERSION=-pine64 make pine64_defconfig
ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- KBUILD_VERSION=arm64 LOCALVERSION=-pine64 make -j18 bindeb-pkg
Install the kernel¶
Boot into recovery and mount boot_a. Make a backup if needed. Then copy over your newly built kernel and if needed modules:
cp -v linux/debian/linux-image/boot/vmlinuz-5.6.0-pine64 [MOUNT POINT BOOT_A]/vmlinuz
cp -v linux/debian/linux-image/boot/config-5.6.0-pine64 [MOUNT POINT BOOT_A]
cp -v linux/debian/linux-image/boot/System.map-5.6.0-pine64 [MOUNT POINT BOOT_A]
sudo rm -rf [MOUNT POINT BOOT_A]/modules
sudo cp -rv linux/debian/linux-image/lib/modules [MOUNT POINT BOOT_A]
Afterwards be sure to unmount the partition so it is cleanly written. Now you can reboot the PinePhone. Once booted, you can verify that the kernel has been successfully updated by checking the build date with uname -a on the device.
References¶
Pine64 wiki has general HW info, pointers to other PinePhone OS projects, HW revisions, serial UART over headphone jack (also in their store), spec sheets, known HW issues, etc
Main UBports repository has instructions for how to install UT images on the PinePhone
PinePhone forum from Pine64 is where many other communities gather that work with the PinePhone
sunxi community is where much of the mainlining effort for Allwinner devices including the PinePhone takes place. Note their build instructions.
Crust firmware implements a deep sleep state and runs on a dedicated System Control Processor outside the main CPU and DRAM.
Android 5.1 based ports¶
Android 5.1 based ports of Ubuntu Touch consist of the Linux kernel for this device plus a minimal Android system that is used to enable all the hardware. Every device has it’s own fork of the Linux kernel. They are all heavily modified for the specific hardware used in that device. These forks are also based off quite old Linux kernel versions.
For some devices continuous integration (CI) has been set up to build both the Kernel as well as the Android system. Other devices have to be built manually from their repositories. For a third group of devices, we do not unfortunately, have the full source code available. The Bq and Meizu devices have kernel sources, but the “Android device tree” is not publicly available. The manufacturers of these devices provided binary builds instead.
- With CI
Nexus 5 (hammerhead)
OnePlus One (bacon)
Fairphone 2 (FP2)
- Manual builds
Nexus 4 (mako)
Nexus 7 2013 Wifi (flo)
Detailed steps for the three CI enabled devices can be found under HAL for Nexus 5, OnePlus One, and Fairphone 2.
For the Nexus 7 2013 Wifi (flo) head over to the Community Ports repository for flo.
The port for the Nexus 7 2013 GSM (deb) was created by a community member. Unfortunately those repositories have disappeared over time. So this build also falls into the group of prebuilt binaries.
Todo
Document the process for Nexus 4 (mako)
Halium based ports¶
Newer ports to Android devices are based on Halium. In some aspects Halium is similar to the 5.1 based ports:
It also uses the device specific fork of the Linux kernel provided by the manufacturer.
It also uses a minimal Android system to enable some hardware.
However, Halium permits a more generic way of porting to Android devices. This allows the work to be shared between multiple projects that bring different flavours of Linux systems to Android devices. Halium ports are also based on newer Android versions 7.1 and above.
Some examples of Halium ports are those for Sony Xperia X and Oneplus 3. Basically all devices that are listed on devices.ubuntu-touch.io, expect those explicitly mentioned above as 5.1, or below as Linux based ports.
All new ports of UT to Android devices should follow the Halium process. Further details can be found under Halium porting
Linux based ports¶
Linux based port refers to devices where a Linux kernel is used without any Android parts. The following devices are in this group:
Librem 5 (librem5)
Pinebook (pinebook)
Raspberry Pi (rpi) (see also this blog post)
System Software guides¶
These guides will give you general instructions on building and testing your own changes to Ubuntu Touch system software. They are not not an exhaustive reference on everything you will come across during development, but they are a great starting point.
Note
If you get stuck at any point while going through this documentation, please contact us for help via the UBports Forum or your preferred communication medium.
Making changes and testing locally¶
On this page you’ll find information on how to build Ubuntu Touch system software for your device. Most of the software preinstalled on your Ubuntu Touch device is shipped in the device image in the form of a Debian package. This format is used by several Linux distributions, such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint. Plenty of documentation on deb packages is available, so we won’t be covering it here. Besides, in most cases you’ll find yourself in need of modifying existing software rather than developing new packages from scratch. For this reason, this guide is mostly about recompiling an existing Ubuntu Touch package.
There are essentially two ways of developing Ubuntu Touch system software locally:
We’ll examine both methods, using address-book-app (the Contacts application) as an example.
We only recommend developing packages using a device with Ubuntu Touch installed from the devel channel. This ensures that you are testing your changes against the most current state of the Ubuntu Touch code.
Warning
Installing packages has a risk of damaging the software on your device, rendering it unusable. If this happens, you can reinstall Ubuntu Touch.
Cross-building with crossbuilder¶
Crossbuilder is a script which automates the setup and use of a crossbuild environment for Debian packages. It is suitable for developers with any device since the code compilation occurs on your desktop PC rather than the target device. This makes Crossbuilder the recommended way to develop non-trivial changes to Ubuntu Touch.
Note
Crossbuilder requires a Linux distribution with lxd installed and the unprivileged commandset available. In other words, you must be able to run the lxc command. If you are running Ubuntu on your host, Crossbuilder will set up lxd for you.
Start by installing Crossbuilder on your host:
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/ubports/crossbuilder.git
Crossbuilder is a shell script, so you don’t need to build it. Instead, you will need to add its directory to your PATH environment variable, so that you can execute it from any directory:
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/crossbuilder:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
# and add it to your current session:
source ~/.bashrc
Now that Crossbuilder is installed, we can use it to set up LXD:
crossbuilder setup-lxd
If this is the first time you have used LXD, you might need to reboot your host once everything has completed.
After LXD has been set up, move to the directory where the source code of your project is located (for example, cd ~/src/git/address-book-app) and launch Crossbuilder:
crossbuilder
Crossbuilder will create the LXD container, download the development image, install all your package build dependencies, and perform the package build. It will also copy the packages over to your target device and install them if it is connected (see Shell access via ADB to learn more about connecting your device). The first two steps (creating the LXD image and getting the dependencies) can take a few minutes, but will be executed only the first time you launch crossbuilder for a new package.
Now, whenever you change the source code in your git repository, the same changes will be available inside the container. The next time you type the crossbuilder command, only the changed files will be rebuilt.
Unit tests¶
By default crossbuilder does not run unit tests; that’s both for speed reasons, and because the container created by crossbuilder is not meant to run native (target) executables: the development tools (qmake/cmake, make, gcc, etc.) are all run in the host architecture, with no emulation (again, for speed reasons). However, qemu emulation is available inside the container, so it should be possible to run unit tests. You can do that by getting a shell inside the container:
crossbuilder shell
Then find the unit tests and execute them. Be aware that the emulation is not perfect, so there’s a very good chance that the tests will fail even when they’d otherwise succeed when run in a proper environment. For that reason, it’s probably wiser not to worry about unit tests when working with crossbuilder, and run them only when not cross-compiling.
Building on the device itself¶
This is the fastest and simplest method to develop small changes and test them in nearly real-time. Depending on your device resources, however, it might not be possible to follow this path: if you don’t have enough free space in your root filesystem you won’t be able to install all the package build dependencies; you may also run out of RAM while compiling.
Warning
This method is limited. Many devices do not have enough free image space to install the packages required to build components of Ubuntu Touch.
In this example, we’ll build and install the address-book-app. All commands shown here must be run on your Ubuntu Touch device over a remote shell.
You can gain a shell on the device using Shell access via ADB or Shell access via SSH. Remount the root filesystem read-write to begin:
sudo mount / -o remount,rw
Next, install all the packages needed to rebuild the component you want to modify (the Contacts app, in this example):
sudo apt update
sudo apt build-dep address-book-app
sudo apt install fakeroot
Additionally, you probably want to install git in order to get your app’s source code on the device and later push your changes back into the repository:
sudo apt install git
Once you’re finished, you can retrieve the source for an app (in our example, the address book) and move into its directory:
git clone https://github.com/ubports/address-book-app.git
cd address-book-app
Now, you are ready to build the package:
DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="parallel=2 debug" dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b
The dpkg-buildpackage command will print out the names of generated packages. Install those packages with dpkg:
sudo dpkg -i ../<package>.deb [../<package2>.deb ...]
Note, however, that you might not need to install all the packages: generally, you can skip all packages whose names end with -doc or dev, since they don’t contain code used by the device.
Next steps¶
Now that you’ve successfully made changes and tested them locally, you’re ready to upload them to GitHub. Move on to the next page to learn about using the UBports CI to build and provide development packages!
Uploading and testing with ubports-qa¶
The UBports build service is capable of building Ubuntu Touch packages and deploying them to the UBports repository. This capability is offered to any developer who wishes to take advantage of it.
This guide assumes that you have a cursory understanding of using Git and making Pull Requests on GitHub.
To use the UBports build service, make sure you understand our branch naming convention. It is required that you follow the convention for deb-packages for CI to build your package correctly.
Fork the repository¶
The first step to make a change to any repository you don’t have write access to is to fork it. Open your desired repository on GitHub and click the “Fork” button in the upper right corner. If offered, select an appropriate account to fork the repository to. Then, clone your fork to your computer.
Now you’re ready to make changes!
Make and commit changes¶
Now that you have the package source downloaded, you can make your desired changes.
Before changing anything, make sure you have checked out the branch you want to work from (probably xenial, assuming you are making changes for the phone images). Then, create a new branch abiding by the branch naming convention.
After making your changes, commit them with a descriptive commit message stating what is wrong and why your changes fix that problem.
You have successfully created and committed your changes. Before pushing your changes, we’ll want to make sure your device will install them.
Update the debian/changelog file¶
Generally, apt will not install a new package from any repository if it has a lower (or the same) version number as the package it replaces. Users may also want to see the changes that are included in a new version of a package. For that reason, we will need to update the package changelog to add a new version.
Note
This is not an exhaustive reference of the debian/changelog format. See deb-changelog(5) for more information.
Determine a new version number¶
To start, figure out what the current version numbering for the package is:
head debian/changelog
This will return a few lines, but the first is the most important to us:
morph-browser (0.24+ubports2) xenial; urgency=medium
The part inside the parentheses (0.24+ubports2) is our version number. It consists of several parts:
The
0.24is the upstream version number, the version that the original project maintainers give to the release we are using. For most UBports projects, the repository you’ll be working on is the original project code. This makes UBports the “upstream” of that project.
If you are making large changes to the repository and UBports is the upstream, you should increment the first part of the version number before the plus (+) and reset the distribution suffix. In our example above, you would make this new version number:
0.25+ubports0
If you are making changes only to the package build (files in the debian/ folder), it is best to only increment the version suffix:
0.24+ubports3
Note
If you find a package which does not seem to follow the above versioning format, please contact us to ask how to proceed.
Write the changelog entry¶
Now it is time to write your changelog entry! Start with the following template:
PACKAGE-NAME (VERSION) DISTRIBUTION; urgency=medium
* CHANGES
-- NAME <EMAIL> DATETIME
If you open the debian/changelog file, you’ll find that every entry follows this format. This helps everyone (including computers) read and understand the contents. This is used, for example, to name the output package correctly for every package version.
Let’s assume I, John Doe, am making a packaging change to the morph-browser package for Ubuntu Touch. I’ll replace the different all-caps placeholders above in the following way:
PACKAGE-NAME is replaced with
morph-browserVERSION is replaced with
0.24+ubports3(which we determined above)DISTRIBUTION is replaced with
xenialCHANGES is replaced with the changes I made in this release. This will include summarized information from my commit messages along with the bugs fixed by those changes. If I’ve fixed multiple bugs, I’ll create multiple bullet points.
NAME is replaced with my name,
John DoeEMAIL is replaced with my e-mail,
john.doe@example.com.Note
You should not use a “noreply” e-mail as your EMAIL for package changelog entries.
DATETIME is replaced with the date and time I made this changelog entry in RFC2822/RFC5322 format. The easiest way to retrieve this is by running the command
date -Rin a terminal.
Note that no line in your changelog entry should exceed 80 characters in length.
With that, my new changelog entry follows:
morph-browser (0.24+ubports3) xenial; urgency=medium
* Add the new "Hello world" script to the package. Fixes
https://github.com/ubports/morph-browser/issues/404.
* Fix whitespace and formatting in the format.qml file
-- John Doe <john.doe@example.com> Mon, 29 Oct 2018 12:53:08 -0500
Add your new changelog entry to the top of the debian/changelog file and commit it with the message “Update changelog”. Push your changes. Now you’re ready to make your Pull Request!
Create your pull request¶
A pull request asks UBports maintainers to review your code changes and add them to the official repository. We’ll create one now.
Open your fork of the repository on GitHub. Navigate to the branch that you just pushed to using the “Branch” selector:
Once you’ve opened your desired branch, click the “New pull request” button to start your pull request. You’ll be taken to a page where you can review your changes and create a pull request.
Give your pull request a descriptive title and description (include links to reference bugs or other material). Ensure that the “base” branch is the one you want your changes to be applied to (likely xenial), then click “Create pull request”.
With your pull request created, we can move on to testing your changes using the UBports build service!
Test your changes¶
Once your pull request is built (a green check mark appears next to your last commit), you are ready to test your changes on your device.
Note
If a red “X” appears next to your last commit, your pull request has failed to build. Click the red “X” to view the build log. Until your build errors are resolved, your pull request cannot be installed or accepted.
We’ll use ubports-qa to install your changes. Take note of your pull request’s ID (noted as #number after the title of the pull request) and follow these steps to install your changes:
Ensure your device is running the newest version of Ubuntu Touch from the
develchannel.Get shell access to your device using Shell access via ADB or Shell access via SSH.
Run
sudo ubports-qa install REPOSITORY PR, replacingREPOSITORYwith the name of the repository you have submitted a PR to andPRwith the number of your pull request without the#. For example runsudo ubports-qa morph-browser 123to install the PR number 123 to morph-browser repo.
ubports-qa will automatically add the repository containing your changed software and start the installation for you. All you will need to do is check the packages it asks you to install and say “yes” if they are correct.
If ubports-qa fails to install your packages, run it again with the -v flag (for example, ubports-qa -v install ...). If it still fails, submit the entire log (starting from the $ before the ubports-qa command) to Ubuntu Pastebin and contact us for help.
Once ubports-qa is finished, test your changes to ensure they have fixed the original bug. Add the ubports-qa command to your pull request, then send the link to the pull request to other developers and testers so they may also test your changes.
When getting feedback from your testers, be sure to add the information to the pull request (or ask them to do it for you) so that everyone is updated on the status of your code.
Every time you make a change and push it to GitHub, it will trigger a new build. You can run sudo ubports-qa update to get the freshest changes every time this happens.
Celebrate!¶
If you and your testers are satisfied with the results of your pull request, it will be merged. Following the merge, the UBports build service will build your code and deploy it to Ubuntu Touch users worldwide.
Thank you for your contribution to Ubuntu Touch!
System Software reference¶
This section includes reference guides on how different parts of the Ubuntu Touch system interact to create the user experience.
There’s not much here yet, but maybe you’d like to add some reference material? Check out our guide to contributing to documentation to learn more.
Working on the Calendar feature¶
The Calendar feature is provided by several components:
The Calendar App, providing the user interface
Evolution Data Server (often shortened as “EDS”), which is the backend where your calendars are stored
sync-monitor, the service responsible for managing the synchronisation with remote calendars
SyncEvolution, the service responsible for performing the synchronisation to a WebDAV/CalDAV remote calendar
Debugging¶
The most convenient way to run commands on the device and collect logs is by opening a remote shell. This can be done by using Shell access via ADB or Shell access via SSH. In the following sections, it’s assumed that you’ve got access to a terminal console to the device.
Scheduling and account issues¶
If you are not sure whether the calendar is being synchronised, or whether the operation is successful, sync-monitor is the component that needs to be examined. This service should always be running in the background, and its logs can be found in ~/.cache/upstart/sync-monitor.log. In order to see them printed in real-time as you operate on the device, you can run this command:
tail -f .cache/upstart/sync-monitor.log
These logs should be enough to give you an idea on whether your calendar accounts are recognised, and whether a synchronisation is scheduled, happening, and completing successfully.
Calendar data synchronisation issues¶
Follow these steps one you are confident that a synchronisation of your account is at least attempted, and want to investigate a synchronisation failure or issues with missing or duplicate items. On the device, it’s possible to run syncevolution in debug mode. To do so, kill any existing processes:
pkill sync-evo
Then, start the syncevolution process with the proper environment variable:
SYNCEVOLUTION_DEBUG=1 /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/syncevolution/syncevo-dbus-server
At this point, open the Calendar App (if it was not open already) and manually trigger a synchronisation (note that the Synchronisation action is only available if your device is connected to the internet): all the logs will appear in the terminal.
In some cases, the output from syncevolution might not be enough: for example, the raw HTTP data is usually not printed. Should you need to see that as well, then you’ll have to modify a configuration file as well. syncevolution’s configuration files are located under ~/.config/syncevolution/, in a subdirectory whose name takes the form <provider-name>-<account-id>. There might be stale directories as well, referring to old accounts which have been since deleted. To find out what accounts are still valid, you can invoke the account-console tool like this:
account-console list
This will print the list of the current valid accounts. Once you’ve figured out what is the account you are interested in, open the file ~/.config/syncevolution/<account>/peers/target-config/config.ini and set the loglevel variable to a higher value (11 seems enough to print all the HTTP traffic):
# level of detail for log messages:
# - 0 (or unset) = INFO messages without log file, DEBUG with log file
# - 1 = only ERROR messages
# - 2 = also INFO messages
# - 3 = also DEBUG messages
# > 3 = increasing amounts of debug messages for developers
loglevel = 11
Note that in order for these changes to take effect, you’ll need to restart the syncevolution process again, as explained above.
Working on the Online Accounts subsystem¶
The Online Accounts subsystem consists of the following components:
The Accounts UI: this provides the user facing components and the base classes for the whole Online Accounts feature. More in detail, you will find these subdirectories:
click-hooks: the programs run when a Click application making use of the Online Accounts functionality is installed or removedclient: the library that client applications can use to request access to an accountonline-accounts-service: the main service, implementing the logic to process client requests; it has no UI, but is able to attach theonline-accounts-uion top of an application’s UIonline-accounts-ui: the user interface which pops up when applications interact with online accounts (for example, the dialog that appears when an application requests access to an account)plugins: the base classes and QML elements that account plugins can use in their implementationsystem-settings-plugin: the user interface for the Accounts panel in the System Settings application
The Account plugins define the available account providers and implement the user interface and logic for creating the accounts
A set of components from the Accounts&SSO project: while development happens in the upstream projects, the UBports forks add the Debian packaging. These projects are:
libaccounts-glib: account management API for C/GLib applications
libsignon-glib: authentication API for C/GLib applications
libaccounts-qt: account management API for Qt applications
signond: authentication daemon, exposing a D-Bus API. It includes the
libsignon-qtlibrary, which offers an authentication API for Qt applicationssignon-plugin-oauth2: OAuth (1.0 and 2.0) plugin for signond
accounts-qml-module authentication and account management API, for QML applications (can be used when implementing account plugins, too)
The account-polld service, which runs in the background and checks every 5 minutes for new account activity (the interval is decided by the Ubuntu Push service)
The account-polld-plugins-go, a repository of plugins for the
account-polldservice. The plugins in this repository are written in Go, but plugins can be written in whatever language and can reside in different repositories
Debugging¶
Account creation issues¶
It may happen that the account creation fails, either due to communication issues with the remote server, or to some bug in the account plugin itself (this can easily happen while developing a new plugin). In order to debug such situations, you can open a terminal (it’s easier if done from a remote shell – you can gain a shell on the device using Shell access via ADB or Shell access via SSH) and start the online-accounts-service in debug mode:
pkill online-accounts-service
OAU_LOGGING_LEVEL=2 OAU_DAEMON_TIMEOUT=9999 online-accounts-service
If you believe that the issue might be caused by some errors in the authentication phase, you can also enabled extensive logging by signond like this:
pkill signond
export SSO_LOGGING_OUTPUT="stdout" # signond logs to the syslog by default
SSO_LOGGING_LEVEL=2 SSO_DAEMON_TIMEOUT=9999 signond
At this point, repeat the operation that was failing, and you’ll get all debugging output printed on the console.
QtMir and QtUbuntu¶
QtMir and QtUbuntu are Qt Platform Abstractions (QPAs) for the Ubuntu Touch platform. QtMir can be thought of as a server for Unity8 while QtUbuntu is used for client applications. Each of them allows their respective domains to use Qt’s high-level abstractions of surfaces, windows, controls, and more, without worrying about the underlying operating system.
QtMir¶
The QtMir QPA allows Unity8, the shell of Ubuntu Touch, to be written in QML and Qt C++ while operating on Mir Surfaces and Windows. It also allows the desktop to be represented and reasoned about as a Qt Scene Graph.
You’ll find most of QtMir’s logging in Unity8’s logs, normally stored at /home/phablet/.cache/upstart/unity8 on Ubuntu Touch. Different logging categories, like qtmir.sessions and qtmir.surfaces, relate directly to different modules within QtMir’s codebase.
While Unity8 shows almost all QtMir logging by default, you can enable even more verbose logging by placing the following content in the file /usr/share/upstart/sessions/unity8.override:
env QT_LOGGING_RULES='qtmir.*=true'
Then restart Unity8:
restart unity8
QtUbuntu¶
The QtUbuntu QPA uses the Mir client API and Ubuntu Platform API to provide Ubuntu Touch apps with a stable hardware compatibility API.
Since QtUbuntu is used directly by apps, any logging output from it will be located in an app’s log file. Most of the time, QtUbuntu gives no logging output. However, if you would like to receive more output, you can set the QT_LOGGING_RULES environment variable appropriately. Since apps on Ubuntu Touch are started using Upstart’s user session, you can set this for all apps until you restart your device with the following command:
initctl set-env QT_LOGGING_RULES='qt.qpa.mirclient.*=true'
We plan to replace QtUbuntu with QtWayland in the future.
Components¶
QtUbuntu has a number of sub-components to provide other features in the Ubuntu Touch platform. In theory, these could be used on other platforms to provide similar features. In practice, this has never happened.
QtUbuntu-Camera provides the aalCamera (Android Abstraction Layer Camera) plugin to QtMultimedia. This plugin allows apps to access Android device cameras through the QtMultimedia standard API. We are trying to replace this component with the gst-droid plugin for GStreamer for all new Android device ports.
QtUbuntu-Sensors provides Android haptic feedback, GPS, orientation, and accelerometer sensors to QtSensors. We are trying to replace this component with sensorfw, a single daemon capable of providing these functions using Android or standard Linux kernel drivers.
QtUbuntu-Media provides hardware encoding and decoding of audio/video content on Android devices to QtMultimedia. It is tightly integrated with media-hub.
MMS infrastructure components¶
oFono - responsible for providing the data context used to transfer MMS data (image/music). It also propagates wap push notifications to upper layers.
nuntium - daemon that listens to wap push notifications and activates the MMS data context on ofono on demand to send/receive MMS’s. It provides a local store.
telepathy-ofono - talks to nuntium through dbus and is used to both relay messages from phone-app to nuntium and inject into the telepathy infrastructure MMS’s received by nuntium as multi-part messages. This component also marks messages as read and delete successfully received messages from nuntium.
history-service - this component watches the telepathy communication and store the messages received by telepathy-ofono or sent by messaging-app.
telephony-service-approver - this component is in charge of adding SMS’s to the messaging menu and to display incoming text notifications.
messaging-app - It renders MMS’s in the conversation view and also provides a way to attach media files to a message in order to send an MMS.
General Description¶
Incoming MMS¶
An MMS WAP push notification is received by ofono and propagated to nuntium
nuntium enables the MMS context in ofono, retrieves the content from MMSC and propagates the new MMS to upper layers.
A new MMS arrives at telepathy-ofono.
If automatic retrieval is not enabled or not available at the moment, a control message is sent to the app
messaging-app request the retrieval of the message to telepathy-ofono.
After the message is retrieved from MMSC, it is delivered to the apps via normal text channel in a multi-part message (one text/html part, one text/plain part and one part per attachment). If the control message was previously delivered, this real message have a flag telling it is a replacement for the previous message.
The new message history service saves the attachment parts to disk, and replaces the paths on text/html to point to the new attachment locations. It also saves a flag and the content type.
Outgoing MMS¶
messaging-app creates a new text channel in telepathy-ofono, or uses an existing channel.
messaging-app sends the MMS as a multi-part message to telepathy-ofono
nuntium enables the MMS context in ofono, sends the MMS through MMSC and signals the upper layers about the current status (sent, draft).
telepathy-ofono sends signals to applications with delivery reports.
References¶
initial source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Specs/MMSInfrastructure
Introduction¶
Porting is the process of making Ubuntu Touch run on new hardware, i.e. on devices that have not previously been able to run Ubuntu Touch.
On the vast majority of commercially available devices crucial parts of their systems are not open source. Furthermore, these proprietary parts are specific, not only to the manufacturer, but usually also to the individual model.
Porting Ubuntu Touch involves building it in such a way as to integrate it with these proprietary components on a device so as to enable it to “talk to” the device hardware.
Before attempting to port Ubuntu Touch to a new device, there are a few things to understand and consider, some research to be done, and a suitable build environment needs to be set up. This section addresses these points.
Introduction to porting¶
This first section will introduce you to the specifics of porting Ubuntu Touch to an Android device. Note that it is written with the general public in mind, not primarily the experienced porting developer. In subsequent sections we have made an effort to differentiate by keeping the main text more concise in order to meet the needs of the more experienced reader, while providing links to supplementary reading for the less experienced.
The guide as a whole is written as a sequence of steps describing how an ideal port might proceed. However, porting is unpredictable and messy. Every device is different and in reality you will likely iterate and revisit some steps, skip over other steps and uncover new and undocumented challenges.
What is Ubuntu Touch?¶
Ubuntu Touch is an open source operating system for mobile devices. It can be ported to devices that originally shipped with Android OS. Alas, the majority of these devices are dependent to some degree on proprietary software.
To be specific, device vendors tend to keep the code that speaks directly to the device hardware (the low level device drivers) proprietary. These components are commonly called the vendor ‘blobs’ (Binary Large OBjects). The vendor blobs need to be incorporated into an Ubuntu Touch port. Note that these components are specific not only to each device, but also to each Android version. It is therefore necessary to secure the correct version of these components when building a port.
This is why Ubuntu Touch cannot be built completely from source code for most commercial devices. Instead, porting the system to these devices involves integrating the previously mentioned vendor blobs into the rest of the system, which can be built from source.
The next component of Ubuntu Touch is a pre-compiled root filesystem which needs to be installed on the device. This component does not communicate directly with the device hardware. Instead, this communication is mediated by a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) which needs to be built for each specific device, because each device has its specific hardware architecture. This component is called Halium and is available in different versions (5.1 which is largely obsolete, 7.1, 9 and 10 as of writing) corresponding to different Android versions.
The Halium project enables Linux systems to run on Android hardware. It is a joint effort by multiple mobile operating systems, notably Lune OS and UBports.
UBports porting builds on top of Halium porting. Consequently, you will be using both the Halium porting guide and the UBports porting guide. At times it may also be helpful to test with one of the other operating systems to debug a problem from different angles.
Halium is an indispensible part of an Ubuntu Touch port and is available in the form of open source software. Developing a new version of Halium is a very considerable task which is why only a few versions of Halium are available. Each port of Ubuntu Touch has to be based on one of the available Halium versions and vendor blobs from the corresponding Android version. See the first two columns of the table below for details.
- Thus an Ubuntu Touch port is composed of the these components:
The Ubuntu Touch (UT) root filesystem (rootfs)
Halium (contained in the boot and system images)
The vendor blobs
You, the porter, need to build Halium (in part or in whole, depending on porting method) and install this together with the Ubuntu Touch rootfs in order to create a functioning Ubuntu Touch port.
Android and Halium versions¶
Halium is built using source code for a modified version of the Android operating system called LineageOS (see the LineageOS website and wiki). The required source code is available online and needs to be downloaded and configured to build the correct Halium version for each individual device port. The table below shows which versions are required for the different Halium versions.
Android version |
Halium version |
Lineage OS (LOS) |
|---|---|---|
7.1 |
7.1 |
14.1 |
9.0 |
9.0 |
16.0 |
10.0 |
10.0 |
17.0 |
Generic System Image¶
Starting with Android version 9.0, a significant change of architecture was introduced. The device-specific vendor blobs now reside on a separate partition instead of sharing a partition with the rest of the system image. This separation of device-specific code from generic code made possible what is known as the Generic System Image (GSI).
A GSI is a system image that is built to be able to function with a wide range of devices. Android devices, as of version 9.0, use a GSI. For more information, see the Android Developer pages
The development of the Android GSI architecture also cleared the way for the now available generic Halium 9.0 arm64 system image (hereafter referred to as the Halium GSI, or simply the GSI) which is used for Ubuntu Touch. This, however, is somewhat different from the Android GSI. For a more detailed explanation of the Halium GSI, please refer to the wiki page on Gitlab CI builds of the generic Halium system image.
What does this mean for the porting process?¶
Since the GSI is a prebuilt, device-independent component, it effectively simplifies the task of building a viable port by removing much of the meticulous and time consuming task of getting the hardware-specific vendor blobs compiled into the system image and configured to function properly.
Porting methods¶
This guide documents three different porting methods, which we call: Full system image method, Halium-boot method, and Standalone kernel method. When porting based on Halium 7.1 the Full system image method is the only available method to follow. For Halium 9.0 all three methods are possible.
Full system image method¶
This porting method requires building both the boot image (halium-boot.img) and the full device specific system image (system.img) from source and installing these together with the UBports root file system (rootfs). For Halium 7.1 ports this is the only possible method (Consequently, this method is sometimes referred to as the Halium 7.1 method). For Halium 9.0 it is also possible to use this method, however for Halium 9.0 the other two methods below are probably easier.
Halium-boot method¶
For this porting method it is sufficent to build the halium-boot.img and install this together with the Halium GSI and the UBports rootfs. This method can be used for Halium 9.0 ports.
Standalone kernel method¶
This porting method only requires building the kernel and installing this together with the Halium ramdisk, the Halium GSI and the UBports rootfs. This method can be used for Halium 9.0 ports.
All methods share some common steps. However, there are also significant differences that must not be missed. Therefore, the methods will be treated separately in the subsequent sections where needed.
The remainder of this section gives some words of advice to new porters. If you already have porting experience or ROM building experience, you can likely skip straight to Preparations.
The challenges of the porting process¶
Building the necessary components and getting them to work together properly always involves an amount of code modifications, configuring and testing, but considerably moreso when doing full system image builds, compared to builds using the GSI (see porting methods).
Luckily, there is a community of porters out there who are eager to see Ubuntu Touch ported to new devices. When you run into trouble, you should search the sources below (Getting community help) to see if others before you have solved the issue. There are online Telegram chat groups you can join to ask for help, but please bear in mind that those participating are doing so in their spare time.
Prior knowledge and skills¶
Porters come in all sizes and shapes, so to speak. Therefore, this guide does not presuppose extensive knowledge or skills in any particular field. You should, however, as a bare minimum be familiar with some common shell commands and be comfortable working from the terminal on you host PC. Furthermore, the guide is based on a host PC running Linux. If you have some knowledge of programming, this will come in handy at some point, especially if you are familiar with C / C++. Also, you should familiarize yourself with git and set up a Github or Gitlab account to keep track of your code changes. It is wise to start documenting your steps from the very beginning.
We have attempted to give a certain amount of explanation along the way. However, this guide is not an in-depth reference into the architecture and inner workings of Ubuntu Touch, and gaining a deeper understanding will consequently require an amount of research on your part.
Getting community help¶
When you run into trouble, and you will, refer to one or more of the sources below:
Matrix: #halium:matrix.org
General advice¶
The more rigorous you are at making notes and documenting your steps, the less time you will spend backtracking your steps and guessing your way along. When dealing with issues that arise along the way, it is wise to work on them one at a time. If you try to correct several things at once, you risk ending up trying to guess which changes solved a given issue, which easily leads to breaking the functionality in question once more at some later stage.
If you are not discouraged after reading this, we welcome your efforts and wish you the best of luck!
The next section presents a key to the rest of this guide.
Preparations¶
Not all devices can be made to run Ubuntu Touch. Research your target device before you start.
To determine your device’s specifications, search for it on GSM Arena and/or Device Specification. Refer to Pick an Android target device in the Halium Porting Guide for further information on requirements and how to check if your device qualifies.
Locate relevant guides and other information¶
If your desired target device complies to the above, the next thing to do is locate the available guides and other documentation. This step will help you later on when you run into issues developing your port. For now, the main thing to look for is how to unlock your bootloader. (See below).
Head over to the LineageOS Wiki. Look up your device and read and bookmark the guides that are listed there. Try a web search for additional information, specifying both its retail name and the code name you found on the LineageOS site. Be careful to check that the information you gather applies to your specific device, keeping in mind that many devices are sold in a number of different variants with different hardware specifications.
Another rich source of information is the XDA Developers Forum.
Unlock the bootloader¶
Vendors usually provide their devices in a locked bootloader state. This is a kind of software “seal” intended to prevent modifications directly to the operating system and system software. If you unlock the bootloader, you will be able to make such modifications, but in this state your device’s warranty might be void. The choice is yours, but this step is mandatory if you wish to install Ubuntu Touch on the device.
Devices differ and there is no general method that covers all makes and models. Therefore, you need to check the aforementioned guides for instructions on how to unlock the bootloader of your particular device.
Install TWRP recovery¶
You need to install a custom recovery image on your device in order to handle formatting and flashing image files onto it. Head over to the Team Win Recovery Project and locate the image file for your device. Follow the installation instructions provided on the website.
Recommendations for the host/build PC¶
The remainder of this guide presumes you are using a build PC running Linux. Although high performance always is nice, stability and sufficient RAM and harddisk space are the main concerns here. You do not need the latest and the best hardware, nor do you need the latest distribution release. In fact, it is not uncommon to run into issues when choosing the very newest release, as some of the software needed may not yet have been built for it. For example, as of writing the latest release of Ubuntu Linux is 20.04, but many still recommend using the previous long term support release, 18.04.
Having completed the steps above, you are now ready to set up your build environment and start the porting process per se (next section).
Setting up the build environment¶
Your host PC needs a number of tools installed before you can begin to port. This section describes the necessary preparations.
Prerequisites¶
When setting up the build environment you need to have Python 3.6 or newer installed on your system. This can be installed via your system’s package management system. Significant changes in syntax were introduced from Python 2 to Python 3, and some stages of the porting process may require Python 2 instead of Python 3. To check which version is active on your system, type:
python -V
Note
Any Linux distribution can easily be set up to switch between Python versions. Consult the documentation for your distribution to find out how this can be done.
Debian (Stretch or newer) / Ubuntu (16.04 or 18.04)¶
If your host PC has a 64-bit architecture (amd64), enable the usage of the i386 architecture:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
Update your package lists to take advantage of the new architecture:
sudo apt update
Install the required dependencies:
sudo apt install git gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \
zip bzr curl libc6-dev libncurses5-dev:i386 x11proto-core-dev \
libx11-dev:i386 libreadline6-dev:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 \
libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw-w64-i686-dev tofrodos \
python-markdown libxml2-utils xsltproc zlib1g-dev:i386 schedtool \
repo liblz4-tool bc lzop imagemagick libncurses5 rsync
Ubuntu (20.04 or newer)¶
If your host PC has a 64-bit architecture (amd64), enable the usage of the i386 architecture:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
Update your package lists to take advantage of the new architecture:
sudo apt update
Install the required dependencies:
sudo apt install git gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \
zip bzr curl libc6-dev libncurses5-dev:i386 x11proto-core-dev \
libx11-dev:i386 libreadline6-dev:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 \
libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw-w64-i686-dev tofrodos \
python3-markdown libxml2-utils xsltproc zlib1g-dev:i386 schedtool \
liblz4-tool bc lzop imagemagick libncurses5 rsync \
python-is-python3
Create a directory named ‘bin’ in your home directory, and include it in your path:
mkdir -p ~/bin
echo export PATH=\$PATH:\$HOME/bin >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
Download the repo script and make it executable:
curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
chmod a+rx ~/bin/repo
Arch¶
If your host PC has a 64-bit architecture, you need to add the [multilib] repository to your /etc/pacman.conf . This will allow you to install and run i686 packages. Please refer to ‘Official Repositories/multilib’ on the Arch Wiki.
Make sure you have the base-devel package installed.
Install the required dependencies from AUR:
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/halium-devel.git && cd halium-devel && makepkg -i
Building and booting¶
Now it’s time to download and configure the necessary source code. Then we’ll build it and get it to boot. Firstly follow the Building steps for your Halium version and porting method. Secondly, proceed with the final Install and boot section.
Building¶
Full system image method or Halium-boot method¶
If you are using either of the Full system image method (for Halium 7.1 or 9.0), or the Halium-boot method (for Halium 9.0), then please pick the two steps below matching your Halium version.
Halium-7.1 - Setting up the sources¶
The sources necessary for the full system image build for Halium-7.1. Halium 7 requires a full system image build.
Setting up the sources for Halium-7.1 builds¶
Create a directory for your Halium source tree:
mkdir halium && cd halium
This directory will be referred to as BUILDDIR throughout the remainder of this guide.
First, initialize your source to the correct version of Halium:
repo init -u https://github.com/Halium/android -b halium-7.1 --depth=1
Then download the code by issuing the command:
repo sync -c -j 16
The download will take some time as it counts several gigabytes. If you have a fast internet connection, you may set an extra JOBS=[number] environment variable at the beginning of the command to open more parallel downloading jobs. Generally, 12 is recommended, which is the default. When it completes, your BUILDDIR will contain a copy of the Halium source tree, but important parts are still missing.
Adding your device-specific source¶
The next step is to add the device-specific sources that need to be integrated into the source tree before you can attempt to build. The missing sources are those required to build the kernel as well as a host of other hardware-specific components of the port.
The necessary sources need to be located and specified by creating a device manifest file (or editing an existing one) in the directory BUILDDIR/halium/devices/manifests.
Note
A correct device manifest is crucial to the success of your port.
Locate your device repository on LineageOS’s GitHub organization. This is done by typing your device’s codename into the search box. The device repository follows the naming convention: android_device_[manufacturer]_[device]. Make a note of this name.
Open the device repository on Github. It will contain a lineage.dependencies (or cm.dependencies) file which specifies all other repositories that your device is reliant upon.
Now create (or edit) the file BUILDDIR/halium/devices/manifests/[manufacturer]_[device].xml. (The description below presupposes that you are creating the file from scratch.)
Paste the following into the file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<manifest>
</manifest>
Your sources must now be entered into the manifest. Start with your device repository. Between the <manifest> and </manifest> tags, create the line below, making sure to replace the information inside the square brackets with your own:
<project path="device/[manufacturer]/[device]" name="[repository name]" remote="[remote]" revision="[revision]" />
‘path’ specifies the target path (subdirectory of your BUILDDIR) where the source code from repository ‘name’, which is found at ‘remote’, will be placed. The repository may contain a number of branches and it is important to secure the correct branch with ‘revision=’
Note
The revision attribute may be omitted if the default revision for this remote is the one that you wish to use.
If you are unsure of your remote, refer to Remotes.
Now create more lines like the previous one, using the lineage.dependencies (or cm.dependencies) file you found earlier in your device repository. This file lists all the remaining repositories needed to build for your selected device. Create one line for each entry in this file, using the following template:
<project path="[target_path]" name="[repository]" remote="[remote]" revision="[revision]" />
The target path is found in the repository’s name. The preceding “android” or “proprietary” is omitted and underscores are replaced with slashes. For example, android_device_lge_bullhead goes in device/lge/bullhead.
Vendor blobs go in the vendor/ folder of your BUILDDIR.
The first place to search for your device’s vendor blobs is in ‘TheMuppets’ GitHub organization. Enter your device’s codename into the search field and see if you get a match. If you are unable to find your device in TheMuppets, you will need to search elsewhere.
It may also be possible to extract the vendor blobs from the device itself by following instructions for your device on the LineageOS wiki as applicable.
A remote entry specifies the name, location (fetch) prefix, code review server, and default revision (branch/tag) for the source.
You can create a remote by adding a remote tag to your manifest as shown in the following example:
<remote name="aosp"
fetch="https://android.googlesource.com"
review="android-review.googlesource.com"
revision="refs/tags/android-7.1.1_r25" />
Only the name, fetch, and revision attributes are required. The review attribute specifies a Gerrit Code Review server, which probably won’t be useful for initial porting purposes.
For example, let’s say that you have a bunch of repositories at https://github.com/SomeUserName/ and your desired branch name is los-14.1 in each. You would create a remote as follows and place it into your local manifest:
<remote name="sun"
fetch="https://github.com/SomeUserName"
revision="los-14.1" />
There are also some remotes available to you by default, though they differ between Halium versions. The following tables will help you identify these. See more information on these remotes can be found at the top of the file BUILDDIR/halium/.repo/manifests/default.xml.
The following remotes are available by default in Halium 7.1:
Remote Name |
Remote Description, URL |
aosp |
Android Open Source Project, https://android.googlesource.com |
los |
LineageOS, http://github.com/LineageOS |
hal |
Halium (link to GitHub root for legacy reasons), http://github.com |
them |
TheMuppets, http://github.com/TheMuppets |
them2 |
TheMuppets (for some xiaomi vendor repos) https://gitlab.com/the-muppets |
Halium-7.1 - Building¶
For Halium-7.1 porting it is necessary to build both halium-boot.img and system.img.
Initializing the build environment¶
First you need to initialize the environment using the envsetup.sh tool included in your source tree. Enter your BUILDDIR and issue the command:
source build/envsetup.sh
The output will look like this:
including device/lge/bullhead/vendorsetup.sh
including vendor/cm/vendorsetup.sh
including sdk/bash_completion/adb.bash
including vendor/cm/bash_completion/git.bash
including vendor/cm/bash_completion/repo.bash
The breakfast command is used to set up the build environment for a specific device. From the root of your BUILDDIR run the following, replacing [CODENAME] with your device’s specific codename:
breakfast [CODENAME]
Breakfast will attempt to find your device, set up all of the environment variables needed for building, and give you a summary at the end.
Modify the kernel configuration¶
The default LineageOS/Halium kernel configuration file needs modifications as Ubuntu Touch requires a slightly different kernel config than Halium, including enabling Apparmor. A script that does this job is provided in your Halium source tree: BUILDDIR/halium/halium-boot/check-kernel-config.
Locate your configuration file. It should be at arch/arm/configs/<CONFIG> or arch/arm64/configs/<CONFIG> depending on the architecture of your device. If you have trouble finding it, run grep "TARGET_KERNEL_CONFIG" device/<VENDOR>/<CODENAME>/BoardConfig.mk to determine the location.
Then, from the root of your BUILDDIR, run:
./halium/halium-boot/check-kernel-config path/to/my/defconfig -w
You may have to do this twice. It will likely fix things both times. Then, run the script without the -w flag to see if there are any more errors. If there are, fix them manually. Once finished, run the script without the -w flag one more time to make sure everything is correct.
Ubuntu Touch requires setting console=tty0¶
The halium-boot initramfs expects /dev/console to be a console device and will not start init if it is not available. This is commonly the case on recent devices, because they either have UART disabled or console= is not specified (null) by default. This can be fixed by supplying console=tty0 as the last argument in the kernel cmdline. To achieve this, proceed as follows:
It should be done in the makefile named BoardConfig.mk (or BoardConfigCommon.mk) located in the root directory of your device tree, e.g. ~/halium/device/<vendor>/<model_codename>/BoardConfig.mk
Add the following line:
BOARD_KERNEL_CMDLINE += console=tty0
If your makefile already includes a line beginning with BOARD_KERNEL_CMDLINE, you may add it just below that to keep things tidy.
Note
The above method, although the preferred one, may not work for some Samsung devices. The result will be that you cannot get access to the device through ssh after boot, and Unity 8 will not be able to start. If you run into this problem, you can specify the setting in your device’s kernel config file instead. Add the following lines:
CONFIG_CMDLINE="console=tty0"
CONFIG_CMDLINE_EXTEND=y
Note
In rare cases the bootloader overwrites the kernel command line argument, rendering the setting above useless. This is the case for the Google Pixel 3a (sargo). To deal with this issue, replicate this commit.
Build¶
Halium will use the mkbootimg tool for creating the boot image. In most cases it is not on the local harddisk, so it can be built by issuing:
mka mkbootimg
Now build the halium-boot.img using the commands:
export USE_HOST_LEX=yes
mka halium-boot
Note
If you prefer make instead of mka you should set -j[num] for parallel building, which reduces build time. Replace [num] with the number of threads in your system plus 2.
Build errors¶
There are a number of known build errors which you might encounter, depending first of all upon how rigorous you have been in following the steps outlined, but you may also run into unforeseen issues. If your build fails at first, make sure you have done exactly as described, then go through the list of known errors in the Halium guide.
I your particular error is not listed, you will need to do some research of your own. If you end up here, know that there is a community of porters, developers and enthusiasts who might be able to help you. Refer to Getting community help.
Once you have successfully built halium-boot.img you can proceed to directly to building system.img:
mka systemimage
Likelier than not, you will run into one or more errors along the way when building the system image. A number of possible errors are documented in the Halium guide. If yours is not listed, seek community help.
Halium-9.0 - Setting up the sources¶
Initializing and downloading the Halium source¶
Create a directory for your Halium source tree:
mkdir halium && cd halium
This directory will be referred to as BUILDDIR throughout the remainder of this guide.
First, initialize your source to the correct version of Halium, depending on your device. If in doubt, refer to Android and Halium versions.
For Halium 9.0:
repo init -u https://github.com/Halium/android -b halium-9.0 --depth=1
With the Halium tree initialized you are ready to download the code by issuing the command:
repo sync -c -j 16
The download will take some time as it counts several gigabytes. If you have a fast internet connection, you may set an extra JOBS=[number] environment variable at the beginning of the command to open more parallel downloading jobs. Generally, 12 is recommended, which is the default. When it completes, your BUILDDIR will contain a copy of the Halium source tree, but important parts are still missing.
Adding your device-specific source¶
The next step is to add the device-specific sources that need to be integrated into the source tree before you can attempt to build. The missing sources are those required to build the kernel as well as a host of other hardware-specific components of the port.
The necessary sources need to be located and specified by creating a device manifest file (or editing an existing one) in the directory BUILDDIR/halium/devices/manifests.
Note
A correct device manifest is crucial to the success of your port.
Locate your device repository on LineageOS’s GitHub organization. This is done by typing your device’s codename into the search box. The device repository follows the naming convention: android_device_[manufacturer]_[device]. Make a note of this name.
Open the device repository on Github. It will contain a lineage.dependencies (or cm.dependencies) file which specifies all other repositories that your device is reliant upon.
Now create (or edit) the file BUILDDIR/halium/devices/manifests/[manufacturer]_[device].xml. (The description below presupposes that you are creating the file from scratch.)
Paste the following into the file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<manifest>
</manifest>
Your sources must now be entered into the manifest. Start with your device repository. Between the <manifest> and </manifest> tags, create the line below, making sure to replace the information inside the square brackets with your own:
<project path="device/[manufacturer]/[device]" name="[repository name]" remote="[remote]" revision="[revision]" />
‘path’ specifies the target path (subdirectory of your BUILDDIR) where the source code from repository ‘name’, which is found at ‘remote’, will be placed. The repository may contain a number of branches and it is important to secure the correct branch with ‘revision=’
Note
The revision attribute may be omitted if the default revision for this remote is the one that you wish to use.
If you are unsure of your remote, refer to Remotes.
Now create more lines like the previous one, using the lineage.dependencies (or cm.dependencies) file you found earlier in your device repository. This file lists all the remaining repositories needed to build for your selected device. Create one line for each entry in this file, using the following template:
<project path="[target_path]" name="[repository]" remote="[remote]" revision="[revision]" />
The target path is found in the repository’s name. The preceding “android” or “proprietary” is omitted and underscores are replaced with slashes. For example, android_device_lge_bullhead goes in device/lge/bullhead.
Vendor blobs go in the vendor/ folder of your BUILDDIR.
The first place to search for your device’s vendor blobs is in ‘TheMuppets’ GitHub organization. Enter your device’s codename into the search field and see if you get a match. If you are unable to find your device in TheMuppets, you will need to search elsewhere.
It may also be possible to extract the vendor blobs from the device itself by following instructions for your device on the LineageOS wiki as applicable.
A remote entry specifies the name, location (fetch) prefix, code review server, and default revision (branch/tag) for the source.
You can create a remote by adding a remote tag to your manifest:
<remote name="aosp"
fetch="https://android.googlesource.com"
review="android-review.googlesource.com"
revision="refs/tags/android-7.1.1_r25" />
(Note: The above is merely an example and cannot be used as such for Halium-9.0)
Only the name, fetch, and revision attributes are required. The review attribute specifies a Gerrit Code Review server, which probably won’t be useful for initial porting purposes.
For example, let’s say that you have a bunch of repositories at https://github.com/SomeUserName/ and your desired branch name is los-16.0 in each. You would create a remote as follows and place it into your local manifest:
<remote name="sun"
fetch="https://github.com/SomeUserName"
revision="los-16.0" />
There are also some remotes available to you by default, though they differ between Halium versions. The following tables will help you identify these. See more information on these remotes can be found at the top of the file BUILDDIR/halium/.repo/manifests/default.xml.
The following remotes are available by default in Halium 9.0:
Remote Name |
Remote Description, URL |
github |
LineageOS, https://github.com/ |
gitlab |
Gitlab, https://about.gitlab.com/ |
aosp |
Android Open Source Project, https://android.googlesource.com |
If you do not specify a remote, aosp is assumed.
With your manifest now complete, go to the root of your BUILDDIR and issue the following command (replace DEVICE with your device’s codename) to bring the device-specific source code into your source tree:
./halium/devices/setup DEVICE
This will first link your manifest from Halium devices to .repo/local_manifests/device.xml and then sync all repositories.
Once complete you can now run a script to apply hybris patches. These are mainly used for building the system image and can be omitted if your goal is to only build halium-boot.img. However, if you run into build errors, it might be worthwhile to try applying these patches all the same.
From the root of your BUILDDIR, run the following command:
hybris-patches/apply-patches.sh --mb
After completing the relevant steps above (according to your chosen, create a pull request containing your device manifest on the Halium devices repository. Also, create a device page on the UBports page under devices. You should link the manifest on Halium devices in your UBports device page.
Halium-9.0 - Building¶
When doing a Halium 9.0 port, you first need to build halium-boot.img. This boot image can then either be combined with the GSI, or you can build your own, device-specific system.img as well.
Building the boot image (halium-boot.img)¶
First you need to initialize the environment using the envsetup.sh tool included in your source tree. Enter your BUILDDIR and issue the command:
source build/envsetup.sh
The output should resemble this:
including device/lge/bullhead/vendorsetup.sh
including vendor/cm/vendorsetup.sh
including sdk/bash_completion/adb.bash
including vendor/cm/bash_completion/git.bash
including vendor/cm/bash_completion/repo.bash
The breakfast command is used to set up the build environment for a specific device. From the root of your BUILDDIR run the following command, replacing [CODENAME] with your device’s specific codename:
breakfast [CODENAME]
Breakfast will attempt to find your device, set up all of the environment variables needed for building, and give you a summary at the end.
The default LineageOS/Halium kernel configuration file needs modifications as Ubuntu Touch requires a slightly different kernel config than Halium, including enabling Apparmor. A script that does this job is provided in your Halium source tree: BUILDDIR/halium/halium-boot/check-kernel-config.
Locate your configuration file. It should be at arch/arm/configs/<CONFIG> or arch/arm64/configs/<CONFIG> depending on the architecture of your device. If you have trouble finding it, run grep "TARGET_KERNEL_CONFIG" device/<VENDOR>/<CODENAME>/BoardConfig.mk to determine the location.
Then, from the root of your BUILDDIR, run:
./halium/halium-boot/check-kernel-config path/to/my/defconfig -w
You may have to do this twice. It will likely fix things both times. Then, run the script without the -w flag to see if there are any more errors. If there are, fix them manually. Once finished, run the script without the -w flag one more time to make sure everything is correct.
The halium-boot initramfs expects /dev/console to be a console device and will not start init if it is not available. This is commonly the case on recent devices, because they either have UART disabled or console= is not specified (null) by default. This can be fixed by supplying console=tty0 as the last argument in the kernel cmdline. To achieve this, proceed as follows:
It should be done in the makefile named BoardConfig.mk (or BoardConfigCommon.mk) located in the root directory of your device tree, e.g. ~/halium/device/<vendor>/<model_codename>/BoardConfig.mk
Add the following line:
BOARD_KERNEL_CMDLINE += console=tty0
If your makefile already includes a line beginning with BOARD_KERNEL_CMDLINE, you may add it just below that to keep things tidy.
Note
The above method, although the preferred one, may not work for some Samsung devices. The result will be that you cannot get access to the device through ssh after boot, and Unity 8 will not be able to start. If you run into this problem, you can specify the setting in your device’s kernel config file instead. Add the following lines:
CONFIG_CMDLINE="console=tty0"
CONFIG_CMDLINE_EXTEND=y
Note
In rare cases the bootloader overwrites the kernel command line argument, rendering the setting above useless. This is the case for the Google Pixel 3a (sargo). To deal with this issue, replicate this commit.
Halium will use the mkbootimg tool for creating the boot image. In most cases it is not on the local harddisk, so it can be built by issuing:
mka mkbootimg
Now build the halium-boot.img using the commands:
export USE_HOST_LEX=yes
mka halium-boot
Note
If you prefer make instead of mka you should set -j[num] for parallel building, which reduces build time. Replace [num] with the number of threads in your system plus 2.
There are a number of known build errors which you might encounter, depending first of all upon how rigorous you have been in following the steps outlined, but you may also run into unforeseen issues. If your build fails at first, make sure you have done exactly as described, then go through the list of known errors in the Halium guide.
I your particular error is not listed, you will need to do some research of your own. If you end up here, know that there is a community of porters, developers and enthusiasts who might be able to help you. Refer to Getting community help.
Building the system image (system.img)¶
If you are using the Halium-boot method, you can skip this step. If you are following the Full system image method, this step is required.
To build the system image:
mka systemimage
It’s likely that you will run into one or more errors when building the system image. A number of possible errors and known solutions are documented in the Halium guide. If yours is not listed, seek community help.
Standalone kernel method¶
If you are using the Standalone kernel method, then please pick the step below.
Halium-9.0 - Standalone kernel method¶
For some devices, Halium-9.0 (and later) ports can be built based on just the kernel source code.
This method makes use of scripts that download and prepare the kernel source, build the boot image and combine this together with other necessary components, thus creating the files needed which can subsequently be flashed to the device.
Setting up the build environment¶
Assuming you have already installed the tools specified in the section on Setting up the build environment, there are just a few more to add before your build environment is complete. Run this commmand to add them:
sudo apt install android-tools-mkbootimg bc bison build-essential \
ca-certificates cpio curl flex git kmod libssl-dev libtinfo5 python2 \
sudo unzip wget xz-utils img2simg jq
Obtaining kernel source¶
Locate the kernel source code for your device. Fork this repo to your own Github account so that you can easily make any necessary adjustments as your work progresses. Make a note of the link to your repo. It needs to be specified in a configuration script for the build (see Configure, build and install).
Clone a Gitlab CI repo to base your build on¶
Ideally you should base your build on a previous build for a device with similar platform/SoC. However, if unsure, use the repo for Xiaomi-violet
Configure, build and install¶
Go through the file deviceinfo and make all necessary adjustments so that it conforms to your device. The first lines should be self-explanatory.
To complete the deviceinfo_flash_offset_ lines, you will need to obtain and examine an existing boot.img for your particular device, e.g. from a LineageOS ROM. Lineage provides a Python script for reading the information in question. Download this script and run it on the boot image you have obtained:
<path-to-unpack_bootimg.py> --boot_img <path-to-boot.img>
This tool will not supply the base offset, only the others, and it gives the absolute value. In other words, the value returned by the script for the kernel offset is in fact the (base offset + kernel offset). In the same manner, the other values are also the sum of the base offset and the offset value in question. Note that offset values for devices that share the same SoC will be the same.
Using this information, you can calculate the correct values for the offsets to be specified in the file deviceinfo. If in doubt, seek help.
When you have finished editing deviceinfo, carefully read and follow the instructions on this page to build and install, remembering to replace ‘violet’ with your device’s codename.
Install and boot¶
Afterwards, proceed with these steps for any porting method.
Installing Halium-based builds¶
With the necessary compontents built, you are now ready to install them on your device and check whether they function as intended. There are only minor differences between Halium versions when it comes to the installation process. In all cases, the system image and rootfs are installed together on the userdata partition of the device. This is done for practical reasons, as it makes the installation process simpler to manage during the first phases of the porting process. Once the port reaches the level of maturity required for it to be offered through the UBports installer (see Finalizing the port), this must be changed in order to reserve a maximum of possible space for userdata.
In brief:
Halium-7.1 requires installing the boot image and system image you have built, together with the UBports rootfs, which you need to download.
Halium-9.0 and newer require installing the boot image you have built together with the GSI and the UBports rootfs. Both the GSI and the rootfs are available for download. Note: If you chose to build your own system.img, then you must use this instead of the GSI when installing.
In order to install Ubuntu Touch, you need a recovery image with Busybox, such as TWRP, installed on your phone. If you have not done so yet, refer to section Install TWRP recovery and install it now.
You will also need to ensure the /data partition is formatted with ext4 and is not encrypted. Boot into recovery, check and adjust as necessary.
Flashing halium-boot.img¶
To install halium-boot, reboot your phone into fastboot mode. Then do the following from the root of your BUILDDIR:
cout
fastboot flash boot halium-boot.img
If you have trouble accessing your device in fastboot mode, but are able to access it in TWRP recovery mode using adb, then boot into recovery mode and try the following alternative method:
cout
adb push halium-boot.img /tmp/
On your device, choose Install in the TWRP menu, navigate to the /tmp directory, choose Image, select your image file, select Boot and swipe to flash.
Note
Samsung devices: Flashing halium-boot.img on Samsung devices is done using the Heimdall flashing utility (on Linux) or the Odin utility (on Windows) after first bringing the device into ‘download mode’. See more information on these utilities here. Follow the instructions for the utility you choose, including the specific flashing command for flashing the boot partition. Install system.img and rootfs (below) with the device in recovery mode.
Installing system image and rootfs¶
Read carefully and perform only the steps which apply to your Halium version and the files you will be flashing!
Download the appropriate rootfs¶
Start by downloading the appropriate rootfs for your device. You need a rootfs corresponding to your device’s architecture and the Halium version you have built. At the moment there are two available versions for Halium 7.1, an armhf (32 bit) version and an arm64 (64 bit) version. For Halium 9.0 there is only an arm64 rootfs available. Follow the appropriate link below to download the one you need.
Halium 7.1, armhf (32 bit): ubports-touch.rootfs-xenial-armhf.tar.gz
Halium 7.1, arm64 (64 bit): ubuntu-touch-hybris-xenial-arm64-rootfs.tar.gz
Halium 9.0, armhf (32 bit): ubuntu-touch-android9-armhf.tar.gz
Halium 9.0, arm64 (64 bit): ubuntu-touch-android9-arm64.tar.gz
Halium-9.0: Download the GSI¶
If you have built your own system.img, skip to the next step.
Download the Halium 9 LXC container image (GSI).
Extract the downloaded file and locate the file android-rootfs.img in the directory system/var/lib/lxc/android. This is the GSI file you will be transferring to the device.
Download the halium-install script¶
Clone or download the halium-install repository. This repository contains tools that can be used to install a Halium system image and distribution rootfs.
Reboot your device to recovery (e.g. TWRP), to get adb access again. Now use the halium-install script to install Ubuntu Touch on your device.
Perform the installation¶
For Halium 7.1 ports use the following command:
path/to/halium-install -p ut path/to/rootfs.tar.gz path/to/system.img
For Halium 9.0 ports, use this command:
path/to/halium-install -p ut -s path/to/ubuntu-touch-android9-arm64.tar.gz path/to/[SYSTEM_IMAGE]
where [SYSTEM_IMAGE] will be the file android-rootfs.img you downloaded and extracted, or alternatively the file system.img you built yourself.
The script will copy and extract the files to their proper places, then allow you to set the user password for your device (the phablet user’s password).
Note
halium-install might fail due to unconfigured bintfmt-support for qemu throwing errors such as ‘chroot: failed to run command ‘passwd’: Exec format error’. To fix this, /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register should be updated. binfmt-manager by @mikkeloscar can provide quickfix.
Booting¶
In the previous sections you completed building and installing Ubuntu Touch on your device. The next step is to boot the device, gain remote access and debug as necessary.
What is a successful boot?¶
When you boot your build for the first time you will normally not get anything on the screen. This is not necessarily an indication of something gone wrong. Your system may well have booted successfully and this can be ascertained by gaining remote access.
If your system booted successfully, you will be able to connect to your device from your host using ssh and continue debugging and configuring from there.
If something went wrong, you should normally be offered a telnet connection through which you can proceed with debugging. If you don’t get either of these, the problem might be more difficult to determine. If you get stuck don’t hesitate to seek help.
Gaining remote access¶
When your device boots it will likely stay at the bootloader screen. However, you should also get a new network connection on the computer you have it plugged in to. To determine if this is the case, and what type of connection you have been offered, proceed as described below.
ssh connection¶
To confirm that your device has booted correctly, on your host computer, run dmesg -w and watch for “GNU/Linux device” in the output. This confirms that you can establish an ssh connection to the device (see below). If you instead get something similar to “Halium initrd Failed to boot”, skip to telnet connection.
Establish an ssh connection to your device as follows:
Your computer should now have a newly connected RNDIS interface. Check the output of ip link show for the device name. The device name will most likely resemble enp0s29u1u1. Assign this device a fake MAC address (if the default one is all 00s) and an IP of 10.15.19.100:
ip link set <devicename> address 02:11:22:33:44:55
ip address add 10.15.19.100/24 dev <devicename>
ip link set <devicename> up
Once finished, you should be able to login with the following:
ssh phablet@10.15.19.82
The password will be the one you set when you ran the halium-install script.
telnet connection¶
If you have been offered a telnet connection the rootfs and system image have likely not been found and mounted at boot time. This may indicate that one or more partitions have not been mounted as they should. Connect to your device with the following command:
telnet 192.168.2.15
From here you can start debugging to find out what went wrong. Please seek help to find out how to proceed.
Configuring, testing and fixing¶
Now that you have successfully booted your build, you are ready to bring up the graphical UI, merge AppArmor into your port and see to any remaining functionality that needs configuring. This section explains how to perform these tasks.
If you are doing a GSI port, much, if not all device features, should already work ‘out of the box’ once you have brought up Lomiri and added AppArmor. For this reason, Halium-9/GSI porting as well as porting based on standalone kernel builds should normally require only udev rules, AppArmor patches and only limited, if any, configuring using the overlay file method. If, despite performing these tasks, your GSI-based build still does not function properly, you may have to resort to building a device-specific system.img in order to reach your goal.
On the other hand, Halium 7.1 porting and Halium-9.0 porting (when building the full device-specific system.img) will require the most work.
Start by bringing up Lomiri, adjusting the display as required, and adding AppArmor. The remaining steps can be performed in arbitrary order and some may not apply to your particular port.
As you go along, it can be helpful to have a list of device functions to go by when checking what works and what needs debugging and fixing. This list, along with instructions on how to add your device to the list of devices that can run Ubuntu Touch, can be found in the informative README.md file linked here.
Lomiri - the graphical UI¶
Now that you have gained access to your newly booted device, there remain a number of things to be configured before Ubuntu Touch will be fully functional on your device. The first is to add udev rules which are required for the graphical UI to be able to launch.
What are udev rules?¶
On your running system there is a continuously running udev daemon which governs how the system handles events on peripheral devices, e.g. connecting the device to a PC via USB cable. This daemon needs a set of rules, the udev rules, to tell it what to do for each possible event. These rules must observe a specific format and they are stored in a file which needs to be generated for each specific device.
Add udev rules¶
The correct way to do this is by storing these settings in overlay files (Overlay file method), and not by making the root directory writeable, as described below. However, in order to quickly set up udev rules which are necessary to complete subsequent steps, you can use the method detailed here for first time setup.
Make / (root) writable¶
Before you make any changes to the rootfs (which will be required for the next steps), you’ll need to remount your root directory (/) with write permissions. Do this by running the following command:
sudo mount -o remount,rw /
Create and add udev rules¶
You must create some udev rules to allow Ubuntu Touch software to access your hardware.
If you are building a Halium-7.1 based port, run the following command, replacing [CODENAME] with your device’s codename:
sudo -i # And enter your password
cat /var/lib/lxc/android/rootfs/ueventd*.rc|grep ^/dev|sed -e 's/^\/dev\///'|awk '{printf "ACTION==\"add\", KERNEL==\"%s\", OWNER=\"%s\", GROUP=\"%s\", MODE=\"%s\"\n",$1,$3,$4,$2}' | sed -e 's/\r//' >/usr/lib/lxc-android-config/70-[CODENAME].rules
For a Halium-9.0 based port you should use the commands below, again replacing [CODENAME] with your device’s codename:
sudo -i # And enter your password
DEVICE=[CODENAME]
cat /var/lib/lxc/android/rootfs/ueventd*.rc /vendor/ueventd*.rc | grep ^/dev | sed -e 's/^\/dev\///' | awk '{printf "ACTION==\"add\", KERNEL==\"%s\", OWNER=\"%s\", GROUP=\"%s\", MODE=\"%s\"\n",$1,$3,$4,$2}' | sed -e 's/\r//' >/etc/udev/rules.d/70-$DEVICE.rules
Note
If you are building a Halium-9.0 based port for a non-treble device, i.e. a device without a separate vendor partition, the command above will give an error. Simply edit and remove the following string from the command: /vendor/ueventd*.rc.
Now, reboot the device. If all has gone well, you will eventually see the Ubuntu Touch spinner followed by Unity 8. Your lock password is the same as you set for SSH.
When Unity 8 is first brought up on your device, you will probably notice that everything is very small. The Display settings section describes how to deal with this.
Overlay file method¶
The UBports rootfs comes with a set of standard configuration files for a number of features such as display scaling, sound, bluetooth and more. These files may not tailored to the needs of your specific device and must therefore to be replaced in order for the feature in question to function as it should. This is done with overlay files, i.e. files that the original files get overwritten with. In other words, you need to rewrite the files in question, making the necessary adjustments for your device, and then see to it that these are incorporated into the build so that they will replace the originals.
If your build is based on the downloaded GSI and rootfs, installed using the halium-install script, then further adjustment of the build will not be possible. This is because the halium-script does not include any method for injecting overlay files. If, on the other hand, your build is based on Gitlab CI scripts, there is a way to further tweak your port with overlay files. This method is described at the end of this section.
Configuring features with overlay files¶
For full system.img-based builds, irrespective of Halium version, the method described below applies if the file you need to edit can be found in the /etc directory (or a subdirectory of this) on your device. In other words, the file or files you wish to overlay must actually exist and be located where specified above. You should not attempt to overwrite files located elsewhere using the method described here.
If your port is based on Gitlab CI scripts, it is actually possible to not only overlay existing files, but also introduce files that were not originally present. The method for Gitlab CI script based builds is detailed at the end of this section. If this is the method you will be using, you should still read both sections to gain a better understanding of how this method actually works.
Overlay method for full system.img builds¶
In your device directory, create a subdirectory named ‘ubuntu’. Collect the files you wish to inject into your build in this directory.
- Relevant files are for example (but this list is incomplete):
70-android.rules
android.conf (for display scaling, see below)
touch.pa (for pulseaudio sound configuration/initialization, see below)
These files are then injected by adding a code block to the file device.mk in your device directory. For the three files above add the following code:
### Ubuntu Touch ###
PRODUCT_COPY_FILES += \
$(LOCAL_PATH)/ubuntu/70-android.rules:system/halium/lib/udev/rules.d/70-android.rules \
$(LOCAL_PATH)/ubuntu/android.conf:system/halium/etc/ubuntu-touch-session.d/android.conf \
$(LOCAL_PATH)/ubuntu/touch.pa:system/halium/etc/pulse/touch.pa
### End Ubuntu Touch ###
The first of these three files, 70-android.rules, is the one you created when bringing up Lomiri. You can extract this file from the device using adb pull or scp and copy it to the ‘ubuntu’ directory of your device source tree, making sure to add the corresponding line to your device.mk file, as described above.
Explanation:
The string before the colon ‘$(LOCAL_PATH)/ubuntu/70-android.rules’ specifies the path to the source file to be injected. The string after the colon ‘system/halium/lib/udev/rules.d/70-android.rules’ specifies the target location on your device.
- The general steps to follow are thus:
Copy the file you wish to modify to the ‘ubuntu’ directory you have created in your device source tree.
Edit the file as needed.
Add a line to the PRODUCT_COPY_FILES section of your device.mk file as shown above.
Rebuild your system.img and reflash together with the ubports rootfs.
Note
The target paths for the files mentioned above are not randomly chosen. You must use the specified paths.
Note
When you specify target path ‘system/halium/etc/myfilename’ your file ‘myfilename’ will end up in the ‘/etc’ directory of your device (i.e. without the leading ‘system/halium’)
Rebuild system.img¶
For Halium-7.1 ports and Halium-9.0 ports using a device specific system.img in place of the GSI, the system.img now needs to be rebuilt.
When you have made the adjustments you need and prepared your source as described above, rebuild the system image: mka systemimage.
When rebuilding the system image after small changes like these, you need not mka clean first. However, changes to PRODUCT_PROPERTY_OVERRIDES might not get detected by the build system. To ensure this, go to the directory BUILDDIR/out/target/product/CODENAME/system and delete the file build.prop before rebuilding.
Overlay method for Gitlab CI script-based builds¶
Builds in this category can also be adapted to a particular device using overlay files, and when building by this method (see Halium-9.0 - Standalone kernel method) it is possible not only to replace existing files, but also to introduce new ones.
When you have prepared the files to replace or introduce, and determined the exact locations where they need to go on your device, these locations need to be replicated under the directory overlay/system/ before running the Gitlab CI scripts according to the instructions included.
For example:¶
The udev rules file 70-android.rules needs to go into system/halium/lib/udev/rules.d/. This is accomplished by first creating the directory in the Gitlab scripts build tree. Standing in the root of this tree, first create the directory and then copy the file to this location:
mkdir /halium/lib/udev/rules.d
cp <path-to-70-android.rules> /halium/lib/udev/rules.d/70-android.rules
Now run the build scripts and the file will get incorporated into your build. Flash the files as per the instructions.
Display settings¶
There are two variables that set the content scaling for Lomiri and Ubuntu Touch applications: GRID_UNIT_PX and QTWEBKIT_DPR.
There are also other options available that may be useful for you depending on your device’s form factor. These are mentioned below and explained in depth in the section on display settings.
All of these settings are guessed by Unity 8 if none are set. There are many cases, however, where the guess is wrong (for example, very high resolution phone displays will be identified as desktop computers). To manually set a value for these variables, simply edit the file at etc/ubuntu-touch-session.d/android.conf specifying them. For example, this is the file for the Nexus 7 tablet:
$ cat /etc/ubuntu-touch-session.d/flo.conf
GRID_UNIT_PX=18
QTWEBKIT_DPR=2.0
NATIVE_ORIENTATION=landscape
FORM_FACTOR=tablet
The method for deriving values for these variables is explained below.
Once you have adjusted the android.conf file to the display settings needed for your device, this file should be incorporated into your build. Follow the overlay file method corresponding to your Halium version.
Determining the correct display settings¶
Display scaling¶
GRID_UNIT_PX (Pixels per Grid Unit or Px/GU) is specific to each device. Its goal is to make the user interface of the system and its applications the same perceived size regardless of the device they are displayed on. It is primarily dependent on the pixel density of the device’s screen and the distance to the screen the user is at. The latter value cannot be automatically detected and is based on heuristics. We assume that tablets and laptops are the same distance and that they are held at 1.235 times the distance phones tend to be held at.
QTWEBKIT_DPR sets the display scaling for the Oxide web engine, so changes to this value will affect the scale of the browser and webapps.
A reference device has been chosen from which we derive the values for all other devices. The reference device is a laptop with a 120ppi screen. However, there is no exact formula since these options are set for perceived size rather than physical size. Here are some values for other devices so you may derive the correct one for yours:
Device |
Resolution |
Display Size |
PPI |
Px/GU |
QtWebKit DPR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
‘Normal’ density laptop |
N/A |
N/A |
96-150 |
8 |
1.0 |
ASUS Nexus 7 |
1280x800 |
7” |
216 |
12 |
2.0 |
‘High’ density laptop |
N/A |
N/A |
150-250 |
16 |
1.5 |
Samsung Galaxy Nexus |
1280x720 |
4.65” |
316 |
18 |
2.0 |
LG Nexus 4 |
1280x768 |
4.7” |
320 |
18 |
2.0 |
Samsung Nexus 10 |
2560x1600 |
10.1” |
299 |
20 |
2.0 |
Fairphone 2 |
1080x1920 |
5” |
440 |
23 |
2.5 |
LG Nexus 5 |
1080x1920 |
4.95” |
445 |
23 |
2.5 |
Experiment with a few values to find one that feels good when compared to the Ubuntu Touch experience on other devices. If you are unsure of which is the best, share some pictures (including some object for scale) along with the device specs with us.
There are two other settings that may be of interest to you:
Form factor¶
FORM_FACTOR specifies the device’s form factor. This value is set as the device’s Chassis, which you can find by running hostnamectl. The acceptable values are handset, tablet, laptop and desktop. Apps such as the gallery use this information to change their functionality. For more information on the Chassis, see the freedesktop.org hostnamed specification.
Native orientation¶
NATIVE_ORIENTATION sets the display orientation for the device’s built-in screen. This value is used whenever autorotation isn’t working correctly or when an app wishes to be locked to the device’s native orientation. Acceptable values are landscape, which is normally used for tablets, laptops, and desktops; and portrait, which is usually used for phone handsets.
AppArmor¶
Without AppArmor a number of device features will not function properly and most apps will crash when launched. For more information on AppArmor, refer to the Ubuntu Wiki.
AppArmor is added through a combination of integrating the necessary code into the kernel source tree and setting necessary kernel configuration. The process is slightly different on Halium-7.1, compared to newer Halium versions.
AppArmor for Halium-7.1 ports¶
Start by downloading the backported AppArmor patch corresponding to your device’s kernel version. Your kernel version is specified at the beginning of your kernel defconfig file, i.e. the one you edited in section Modify the kernel configuration above. (For more information on backporting, see the bluetooth section below.)
You now need to delete your entire BUILDDIR/kernel/VENDOR/MODEL/security/apparmor subdirectory and replace it with the one you downloaded. Then rebuild halium-boot.img.
If you get errors when building, resolve them one at a time, modifying your source code as needed. Note that you should only modify the code in the AppArmor subdirectory if at all possible. Modifying code elsewhere will more than likely just compound your problems.
Seek help as needed from one of the sources mentioned in the subsection on getting community help.
Once you have successfully rebuilt halium-boot.img, flash it to your device. If keyboard vibration works, this is a good indication that AppArmor has been successfully applied. Also, check if apps launch normally.
AppArmor for Halium-9.0 ports¶
When doing Halium-9.0 (and later) ports, it is generally sufficient to cherry pick certain commits to the kernel source rather than replacing the whole apparmor directory in the kernel source tree. Follow the link below which corresponds to your device’s kernel version and select the most recent block of commits (i.e. all the commits that were added on the same and most recent date):
Make sure your kernel defconfig has the setting:
CONFIG_DEFAULT_SECURITY="apparmor"
Now rebuild the boot image following your chosen build method, and flash it onto your device. Check if keyboard vibration works. This is a good indication that AppArmor has been successfully applied. Also, check if apps launch normally.
Wifi¶
For the time being, refer to the Halium porting guide.
Sound¶
Ubuntu Touch uses Pulseaudio as sound server. Documentation can be found at freedesktop.org and in the Ubuntu manpages
The default configuration file used on Ubuntu Touch is touch.pa. This file is located in the /etc/pulse directory on your device and it will need adjustment in order for sound to function properly. Extract the file and copy it to the ubuntu directory you created in your device repo (see Overlay file method).
Locate the line:
load-module module-droid-discover voice_virtual_stream=true
and replace it with this:
load-module module-droid-discover rate=48000 quirks=+unload_call_exit
At the end of the file, append this:
### Automatically load the audioflinger glue
.ifexists module-droid-glue-24.so
load-module module-droid-glue-24
.endif
Your modified touch.pa file now needs to be included in your build. Follow the overlay file method corresponding to your Halium version.
Bluetooth¶
Halium-7.1 porting to devices with kernels predating 4.2 will or may require backporting drivers from a newer kernel version, whereas Halium-9.0 based ports can skip this step.
Bluetooth backporting to older kernel versions¶
When porting to devices running older kernel versions (mainly version 3.x found in Android 7/ Halium-7.1 devices), it is necessary to replace the kernel bluetooth stack with a newer one. This is because the newer bluetooth hardware in today’s bluetooth peripheral devices often has trouble talking to the older bluetooth drivers. This can be fixed by bringing in driver code from newer Linux kernel versions. The process is called backporting.
Backporting has been greatly facilitated by the Linux Backports Project which has existed for some time. This project is aimed at mainline Linux kernels and the tools (scripts) therein are not specifically tailored to Ubuntu Touch. They will consequently abort at some point during the process. However, they are the best option available, and can provide significant help all the same. The method below is based on the use of a version of these scripts which has been specially prepared by Canonical.
Note
Although there are other kernel versions besides v4.2 available, the backports script is specifically tailored to backporting from version 4.2 and thus effectively limits you to this option.
Bluetooth backporting steps¶
The steps are as follows:
Record bluetooth driver and settings
Download backports script
Download 4.2 kernel source
Run backports script and fix errors
Apply security patch
Apply new settings
Build and flash halium-boot.img
Build and flash system.img
These steps will bring in bluetooth driver source from the mainline 4.2 kernel and place it in a directory named backports in your device’s kernel source tree. It will also modify Makefiles and Kconfigs as necessary, thereby disabling the original drivers/bluetooth directory of your kernel source. The mainline kernel may not contain all bluetooth drivers required for the device being ported. For this reason it is important to make sure to first record all necessary drivers, as any ones missing in the mainline kernel will have to be migrated from their original location (drivers/bluetooth) into the backports/drivers/bluetooth directory as described later in this section before rebuilding halium-boot.img.
Record bluetooth driver and settings¶
By the time you reach this point in the porting process, you will have completed building halium-boot (probably a number of times). Your kernel defconfig will contain bluetooth settings including one that designates the driver used by your device. These must be recorded before proceeding.
The experienced developer will likely be able to determine the relevant settings manually by searching through the defconfig file. Many of them will appear next to each other in one place in the file. Some may be spread elsewhere making them difficult to locate. When searching manually, help can be found by consulting the Kconfig files in relevant subdirectories of your kernel source tree.
If you do not have extensive experience, use the menuconfig tool instead, taking care to use it ONLY for reference, i.e. without making any changes.
Important
Modifications done with menuconfig will not affect your kernel defconfig file, but may still corrupt your build.
After completing a build of halium-boot.img:
cd out/target/product/[DEVICE]/obj/KERN_OBJ
ARCH=arm64 make menuconfig
(If your device is armhf, use ARCH=arm instead.)
Navigate to the bluetooth drivers submenu and note down all activated settings and what they do. Also note which other settings they depend on (found under Help).
Example:¶
For the Samsung Galaxy S7 (herolte) the original defconfig file contains a number of CONFIG_BT settings, none of which actually designate the bluetooth driver used by this device. The setting for the driver itself is CONFIG_BCM4359=y. This was not one of the drivers brought in by the backporting steps below. It therefore had to be added afterwards.
Download backports script¶
Clone the backports scripts into a directory outside your halium source tree by issuing this command from your home (~) directory:
git clone https://github.com/ubuntu-phonedations/backports.git -b for-ubuntu backport-scripts
This downloads the backports scripts prepared by Canonical based on the Backports Project mentioned above, and places them in the directory ~/backport-scripts. The scripts are specifically written to backport from kernel version 4.2.
Download 4.2 kernel sources¶
Create a directory (outside your halium source tree) for the kernel source from which you will pull the newer drivers:
mkdir ~/kernel-backports
Now clone the kernel source for v4.2:
cd ~/kernel-backports
git clone https://kernel.googlesource.com/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next -b v4.2
Run backports script and fix errors¶
Navigate to your backports scripts directory and issue the command below (using Python2 as shown):
python2 ./gentree.py --copy-list ./copy-list --integrate --clean --git-revision v4.2 ~/kernel-backports/linux-next ~/halium/kernel/[VENDOR]/[MODEL_NAME]
It is to be expected that there are errors during this step. You will then have to determine the cause, fix it and retry. The last error message concerns the Makefile and includes info about having generated a file named Makefile.rej, this means you will find information in this file about changes that did not complete successfully, but which you can apply yourself. These need to be completed before proceeding with the build.
Apply security patch¶
An additional generic security patch needs to be applied.
Apply new settings¶
Your kernel config file (defconfig) needs to be modified in order for the backported driver and protocol code to be activated.
Start by locating all lines beginning with CONFIG_BT_ and move these to the end of the file. Collecting them there makes the subsequent steps somewhat easier by helping to keep track of the changes you make.
Next, deactivate all that are activated, i.e. do not have a leading #, by inserting this leading #. At the same time, for each one, add a corresponding one beginning with CONFIG_BACKPORT_BT_, e.g.:
CONFIG_BT=y
becomes:
#CONFIG_BT=y
and then insert the corresponding line for backports:
CONFIG_BACKPORT_BT=y
Now add these settings:
#Depending options for new stuff from backports
#CONFIG_CRC16=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_BLKCIPHER=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_AES=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_CMAC=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_HMAC=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_ECB=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_SHA256=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_USER_API=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_USER_API_HASH=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_USER_API_SKCIPHER=y
#CONFIG_TTY=y
At this point, check for any remaining settings you recorded from your original defconfig, which were dependent upon CONFIG_BT=y and have not been replaced by a corresponding CONFIG_BACKPORT_BT_XXXX=y setting, making sure not to forget your device’s bluetooth driver. Such settings will no longer have any effect and must be pulled into the build in the following manner:
The corresponding source file(s) will have to be migrated from their original location to the corresponding location under backports/drivers/bluetooth/. The files Makefile and Kconfig need to be edited to include this missing setting or else they will not be built. Check the corresponding files in the original location for the necessary settings.
Once the above is complete, add the following lines and edit as necessary, following the directions below:
CONFIG_BACKPORT_DIR="backports/"
CONFIG_BACKPORT_INTEGRATE=y
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_5=y #disable for kernel > 3.4
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_6=y #disable for kernel > 3.4
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_7=y #disable for kernel > 3.4
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_8=y #disable for kernel > 3.4
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_9=y #disable for kernel > 3.4
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_10=y #disable for kernel > 3.10
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_11=y #disable for kernel > 3.10
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_12=y #disable for kernel > 3.10
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_13=y #disable for kernel > 3.10
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_14=y #disable for kernel > 3.10
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_15=y #disable for kernel > 3.10
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_16=y #disable for kernel > 3.10
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_17=y #disable for kernel > 3.10
# CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_18=y #disable for kernel = 3.18
CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_3_19=y
CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_4_0=y
CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_4_1=y
CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_4_2=y
CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_NAME="Linux"
CONFIG_BACKPORT_KERNEL_VERSION="v4.2"
CONFIG_BACKPORT_LINUX=y
CONFIG_BACKPORT_VERSION="v4.2"
CONFIG_BACKPORT_BPAUTO_USERSEL_BUILD_ALL=y
As an example, the lines above have been edited to conform with backporting from kernel 4.2 to a device with kernel version 3.18. For devices running lower kernel versions enable each line specifying a version above the device’s kernel version by removing the leading # on these lines.
You are now ready to build.
Build and flash halium-boot.img¶
Return to the root of your BUILDDIR and build:
mka halium-boot
Build errors may occur and will vary depending on device. Handle them one at a time, seeking help as necessary.
After building and flashing halium-boot, check the output of dmesg on the device to see that bluetooth has been enabled:
dmesg | grep tooth
Your output should resemble the following (from the Samsung Galaxy S7):
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ dmesg | grep tooth
[ 2.219667] lucky-audio sound: moon-aif3 <-> lucky-ext bluetooth sco mapping ok
[ 2.252591] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[ 2.252601] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[ 2.252613] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11
[ 2.252626] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[ 2.252631] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[ 2.252639] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[ 2.252646] Bluetooth: HIDP (Human Interface Emulation) ver 1.2
[ 2.252654] Bluetooth: HIDP socket layer initialized
[ 2.252661] Bluetooth: Virtual HCI driver ver 1.5
[ 2.252736] Bluetooth: HCI UART driver ver 2.3
[ 2.252743] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol H4 registered
[ 2.252749] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol BCSP registered
[ 2.252754] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol LL registered
[ 2.252760] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol ATH3K registered
[ 2.252765] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol Three-wire (H5) registered
[ 2.252771] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol BCM registered
[ 2.252876] Bluetooth: Generic Bluetooth SDIO driver ver 0.1
[ 2.253388] [BT] bcm4359_bluetooth_probe.
[ 2.253630] [BT] bcm4359_bluetooth_probe End
[ 5.376110] [BT] Bluetooth Power On.
[ 7.499943] [BT] Bluetooth Power On.
[ 8.051620] [BT] Bluetooth Power On.
If you do not get similar output, something has gone wrong. Check that you completed all steps above as described and seek help as needed.
You have now rebuilt your halium-boot.img to include updated bluetooth drivers and only one final step remains.
Build and flash system.img¶
The system image needs to be rebuilt with a configuration script for bluetooth adapted to your device. On the completed build, this file is located at:
/etc/init/bluetooth-touch-android.conf
An example script can be found here. Make sure to adapt as necessary.
Place this script in your device/[VENDOR]/[DEVICE]/ubuntu directory and inject it using the overlay file method.
Rebuild and flash your system.img.
Finalizing the port¶
Once most frequently used features are working on your port you can start thinking about finalizing it, i.e. building recovery and preparing the installer so that it is easier for people to install and test it. This can give valuable feedback that will potentially help you to find and diagnose remaining issues faster than you could have done on your own.
Previously, your port has had the rootfs and system image coexisting on the userdata partition. These need to be moved to the system partition in order to ensure a maximum of available space for user data. This is done by modifying the code, building recovery.img and subsequently rebuilding the boot image.
With the necessary components prepared, these should first be installed in their correct places manually for testing purposes. Once it has been confirmed that the port boots and works as it should, the final step is to prepare and test an installer config file that will permit the automation of the whole process.
Building UBports recovery¶
For the time being, Halium 7.1 porters should refer to the UBports porting notes on the UBPorts installer and System image.
For Halium-9.0, exact steps are not available at this time. Please get in touch with the community for help.
Configuring the UBports installer¶
For the time being, Halium-7.1 porters should refer to the UBports porting notes on the UBPorts installer and System image.
For Halium-9.0, exact steps are not available at this time. Please get in touch with the community for help.