Mycroft integration with Unity 8

Sat Oct 24 15:53:02 UTC 2015

S
On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 7:10 PM Ted Gould <ted at ubuntu.com> wrote:

>
> So, there is a lot of different things here. This e-mail is going to be
> long, sorry about that. tl;dr, it's complicated, if you care you should
> actually read it :-)
>
> The Ubuntu archives is a repository of Debian packages, to get a package
> in there you need to follow all the licensing requirements of the Ubuntu
> community and get a developer of appropriate privileges to approve the
> package and sponsor it into the repository. A Debian package can depend and
> use any other Debian package in the archive, so using Python (any version)
> is not a problem there. For something to be in the main repository it can
> only depend on packages in main, but Python again is not an issue. To
> create a service with a Debian package you need to install a Systemd unit
> file that describes the service and it can launch at various times
> depending on the configuration in the file. Any deb package can do this.
>
> For the Ubuntu Phone an image is created from a bunch of debian packages
> from the Ubuntu archive. The list of packages is determined by Canonical
> and the OEMs that are shipping the phones. That image is then installed
> read-only onto a phone, so adding additional debs is impossible without
> invalidating it's ability to upgrade to new images (really only for
> developers). To extend the phone Click packages can be used, but Click
> packages were designed primarily for applications so they don't have any
> features like services as part of their specification. There is no way to
> build a Click that would install a service on the Ubuntu Phone today. Also,
> there has been a significant effort to remove long-running Python tasks
> from the phone image because of the memory costs associated with them, as
> there is significant memory pressures on those devices today. That being
> said, if Canonical and and OEM really wanted to change that package
> listing, there's no technical reason it couldn't include any debian package
> in the archive.
>
> The future of the Ubuntu Phone is having it be built on Snappy, which
> changes things significantly. Snappy realized the goodness and goals of
> Click and extended them to be more generic for building any system service.
> So a snap can have a service associated with it that can be run at the
> system level similar to how you've described. Snaps can be built from the
> Ubuntu archive or from other repositories (a popular one is PyPi) depending
> on the needs of the developer building the snap. It can include things like
> the Python version that is needed or anything else, the intention is that
> it is self contained with everything it needs.
>
> Now, looking into the crystal ball a bit (not decided, but I'm guessing
> here), it seems unlikely that we will present to the user of an Ubuntu
> Phone the ability to install all the snaps that are in the store. There
> will be things that will be cloud and server based that most users would
> not want on a phone. It is highly likely that a line that will be drawn
> there is whether it installs a service. So then, for a standard user, there
> will not be a way to install things like an Apache Webserver on their phone
> easily. I imagine there'll be also a way to, with something like adb,
> install any snap that is in the store. So if you're someone who really
> needs a webserver on their phone, go with it. So that means that for the
> majority of devices, to have something that is service based, you'd need to
> be included in the Gadget snap which configures which other snaps are on
> the device. This will largely be determined by the OEM shipping the device.
> I imagine Canonical will require shipping the Unity snap as part of the
> requirement to use the Ubuntu Phone trademarks, but that is speculation.
>
> So, my advice, you've probably already built a snap for Mycroft. That's
> great, you should do that. It's probably the best way to get onto devices
> like the phone. Your next step would be to try to get OEMs interested in
> including that on their device. One great way would be to make it easy for
> hobbyists to get it on their devices, and putting a snap in the store is a
> good step in that direction.
>
> HTH,
> Ted
>
>
> On Fri, 2015-10-23 at 16:28 -0300, Jonathan D'Orleans wrote:
>
> Thank you all for the replies, that's really important for us.
>
>
> For integration I mean to be able to run a background process just after
> Ubuntu is started and to launch an UI as soon as someone start interacting
> with Mycroft. We could imagine the follwing steps:
>
> 1. Turn on your Ubuntu device and login
>
> 2. Say, for instance: "Hey Mycroft, what's my schedule for today?"
>
> 3. Mycroft speaks it out and at the same time Mycroft UI is launched
> showing you the schedule.
>
>
>
> So, if I well understood we can use Upstart to autostart Mycroft as soon
> as Ubuntu is started. We also could develop a Scope or QML App to be the
> Mycroft UI.
>
>
>
> Supposing we would communicate between Mycroft background process and a
> QML UI we could use PyOtherSide. However, I'm not sure how it'd work for a
> Scope UI instead (Scopes are developed in C++ or GO, right?).
>
>
>
> I'm a little bit confused about Python support. That's a crucial point for
> us to know.
>
>
>
> By default Ubuntu won't have any Python dependencies. Hence, in order to
> solve those we would ship Mycroft in a .deb and solve all needed
> dependencies.
>
>
>
> Will only Python 3 be available or Python 2.x would be installable as well
> ?
>
>
>
> Supposing we use Snappy, if I well understood, Mycroft would be shipped in
> a container and then its environment would be isolated from everything
> outside that. Then, inside Mycroft container we could solve all
> dependencies including Python etc. However, I didn't understand what you
> mean by: "The difficult part here is that the interfaces may not have
> Python libraries to access them".
>
>
>
> Do you mean that applications from another Snappy container could not be
> able to communicate with Mycroft?
>
>
>
> Finally, are my assumptions correct? Is there any point you could
> elaborate more if needed?
>
>
>
>
>
> Again, we are really grateful for your support,
>
>
>
>
> On 23 October 2015 at 13:05, Ted Gould <ted at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 2015-10-23 at 15:05 +0200, Michał Sawicz wrote:
>
> > As Mycroft client is in Python it'd be important for us to run it> natively in mobiles.> 2. Anyone knows if Python will be natively supported for Ubuntu mobiles> versions? Are there any restrictions or particularities for that to> happen?
>
> AFAICT there's no plans to support Python as a developer language for
> the platform, mostly because of resource considerations. Python (only
> version 3), however, is available on the device today, so if Mycroft
> became part of the platform, shipped on the devices, it'd need to be
> packaged as a .deb with appropriate dependencies. Note that, without
> knowing how you want to integrate, I can't comment on whether it's even
> a possibility for the products.
>
>
> As we move to a Snappy based system apps will be able to include the
> interpreter of their choice. So if, for instance the Mycroft developers
> wanted to include Python3 they could and Snapcraft makes that pretty easy.
> The difficult part here is that the interfaces may not have Python
> libraries to access them, which is where choosing a different language
> could become tricky.
>
> It is important to note that in a Snappy world the base system doesn't
> have an accessible Python3 interpreter. And I don't believe anything that
> would be shipped as part of a Unity8 framework would ship it.
>
> Ted
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> *Jonathan D'Orleans*
>
>
> --
> ubuntu-devel mailing listubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
>
>
>
> --
> ubuntu-devel mailing list
> ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/attachments/20151024/2b7c008c/attachment-0001.html>