Sailfish OS SDK live ISO - Who (really) wants it, and why?

asked 2014-11-20 18:36:14 +0200

eric

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https://twitter.com/erkki...

Hi all,

As you have noticed, @KiRiK earlier provided a live image, see the post below for reference:

https://together.jolla.com/question/63245/sailfish-os-sdk-live-iso/

Since we do not permit redistribution in our EULA, @KiRiK has agreed to comply and remove the link to his work. It seems the Live image has been appreciated by some community member, which is great.

Through this new post, we want to better understand why having the SDK available in this form actually brings value to you and how much it is actually wanted so we can work along with @KiRiK to offer a fully supported experience.

Please, vote and answer so we move this together towards the needed direction, thanks!

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Comments

5

Could you give us some information on why the redistribution is forbidden. Is this related to drivers present in the SDK, or for some other reasons ?

Sfiet_Konstantin ( 2014-11-20 18:43:07 +0200 )edit

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@Sfiet_Konstation imagine some evil person providing a manipulated image, bundling malware into developed apps. Not sure whether this is an actual reason, but I think it is a good one - there's so much free software being bundled with crap. That said, I agree that such a live image would be a handy thing to have (see my answer below).

tokaru ( 2014-12-21 10:39:27 +0200 )edit

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@tokaru So because malware exists, we can't have nice things? This argument doesn't fly. There is many great, free software available without bundled crap. Of course, you have to make sure you get the software from a trusted party. And in this case it would be nice if the steps and tools needed to create the live ISO are open too, so it can be verified and duplicated by others.

Fuzzillogic ( 2014-12-22 13:53:33 +0200 )edit

@Fuzzillogic did you read my answer below? It has some more context - of course we can have nice things. Actually, getting the software from a trusted party is what I am talking about :) I know there is a lot of great free software without malware, but there are also a lot of malicious people abusing great free software to spread their own unwanted stuff.

tokaru ( 2014-12-22 14:28:38 +0200 )edit

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answered 2014-11-20 21:07:11 +0200

chuvilin

761 ●6 ●9 ●14

http://sailfish.su/

Well, let me start with the answers.

In many ways the idea to make such an image is formed by my past experience at position of Tizen Community Manager in Russia. We used USB sticks with the same images at trainings (DevLabs) and Hackathons. This allows the participant to quickly start learning and development, not wasting time on installing and configuring the SDK and solution of emerging issues on different computers. Additionally, you can be sure that the SDK is correctly configured with the needed way. In addition, I have included in the image some tools that may be usefull int the development process.

The image with Tizen SDK is public available. And I want to say that the number of downloads of third-party developers is quite large.

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Comments

10

I can only agree with @KiRiK, having a environment ready for development greatly reduces the threshold to contribute and try out developing for this operating system. I don't have any prior experience with Sailfish but having this type of tool would at least make me more inclined to develop new things. Just my 2 cents.

imperios ( 2014-11-22 01:24:44 +0200 )edit

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It's essential that new developers are able to test/get familiar/learn SDK without having troubles of SDK set up. So, I think that something like live ISO image will help a lot.

branek ( 2014-12-18 17:12:15 +0200 )edit

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answered 2014-12-16 15:29:50 +0200

ossi1967

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I think making the first experiences with the SDK as easy as possible for future developers is vital. Bowsing through the December archives of the mailing list, I count three threads related to SDK installation problems within the first half of the month: [SailfishDevel] Sailfish OS set up on mac, [SailfishDevel] Installation trouble with the SDK and [SailfishDevel] OS X Yosemite: Deployment of app to Jolla phone fails using rsync.

Having a live CD in these situations serves two purposes:

Let the interested developer experience her or his first steps in the world of Sailfish OS and Silica without having to solve installation related problems first
Act as a reference system for the user to see how things should be and compare things to his real OS.

The main point is that people do have problems with installing and running the SDK, and a live CD is one way to help them in some situations.

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9

answered 2014-11-20 22:56:48 +0200

MoritzJT

2049 ●38 ●59 ●63

I would only start programming on such a live image as I can't risk setting up so many environments on my own PC. Don't want to install different operating systems just to keep them clean. That live image could help out very nicely :-)

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Comments

1

Exactly. It's not much different than e.g. a long time Windows user who wants to try to learn to use Linux. The first way to safely approach it it's by booting a well configured Live-CD distro.

simosagi ( 2014-11-22 18:01:33 +0200 )edit

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answered 2014-12-16 17:19:12 +0200

tokaru
14054 ●175 ●219 ●220

I agree with most of the arguments here, especially lowering the barriers for newbies and sandboxing of the dev environment.

However in general, I would prefer if such an image would be maintained officially by the Jolla/SailfishOS crew. After all, software created in this environment would be running on the majority of all SailfishOS phones, it could be really painful to accidentally spread something unwanted in there.

Please don't get me wrong: I am not saying that I suspect @KiRiK to spread unwanted things, not at all. I do not know anything about him or his project history. I am just generally very cautious about what I run on my devices, and even more cautious about tools I use to create software which is going to run on devices of other people.

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5

answered 2014-12-22 12:20:04 +0200

blabber

753 ●12 ●16 ●24

updated 2014-12-22 16:16:06 +0200

I am using FreeBSD which is not (officially) supported by the Sailfish SDK. A Sailfish SDK live ISO would allow me to use the SDK in a supported way, either by booting into the live environment or by using a VM.