Document installation of Labdoo on windows (using a virtual machine)

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imatge de lisabell
Enviat per lisabell el dj., 10/26/2017 - 16:09
Equip/s: 
Software Development
Tipus: 
General task
Estat: 
Open
Prioritat: 
Normal
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On: https://github.com/Labdoo/Labdoo there is a documentation of how to install the labdoo project on a ubuntu machine. We need an additional documentation for windows, on how to set up the labdoo project on a virtual machine on windows and work with it to develop and test the xamarin app

Comentaris

imatge de jordi
Enviat per jordi el dv., 10/27/2017 - 21:52

Hi Lisa,

The Labdoo platform is designed to run on Linux and our production server is a Linux system, this is why we only focus on Linux. There is no need to support other OS like Windows because we don't have plans to run the Labdoo platform in any system other than Linux. Some main reasons include (1) Linux provides a more powerful UNIX-type environment which is ideal for development, (2) it is typically more secure, (3) it's open source and (4) it is also cheaper to run Linux instances in AWS than Windows.

Supporting Windows would require substantial changes to our code base and there is no clear use case for the reasons above. So i don't foresee us supporting Windows in the future. Of course anyone is welcome to create a port of the Labdoo social network to Windows or other OS's, but it's something we cannot do ourselves as we need to fully focus on the production architecture.

Hope this makes sense and thanks.

imatge de lisabell
Enviat per lisabell el dv., 10/27/2017 - 22:05

yes you are right. But there is one thing:
I am creating the prototype for the labdoo app with xamarin and so far there is no linux support for xamarin! :/ It is only available for Windows and Mac.
I just found that out last week when I was thinking about switching to ubuntu myself, because of the vm network problems.
Xamarin has advantages, because you only have one codebase for creating apps for iOs, android and windows devices and the resulting apps look quite native, at least more than one can achieve with cordova (a similar framework). And since we have very little programming resources we should keep the work as limited as possible.
BUT: if we need something that will run on Linux we have a problem..:/
We need to think about a solution for that because we should try to have just one codebase for everything, web and mobile.
I do understand the advantages of Ubuntu/Linux, although I personally prefer Windows, also for coding.. :)

imatge de lisabell
Enviat per lisabell el dv., 10/27/2017 - 22:35

It is possible to develop cross plattform apps with cordova or ionic (which also uses cordova) on linux. BUT the apps created with cordova (or ionic) are not native apps and they do not have a native-level performance. With Xamarin you have native like performance and Xamarin is just more powerful.
And additionally in cordova or ionic you develop with just HTML/CSS and javascript/typescript and in xamarin it is c#
Xamarin and cordova are both open source. I hope xamarin will be available on linux soon, but as far as I read they are not planning to support it in the near future..

imatge de lisabell
Enviat per lisabell el dv., 10/27/2017 - 22:50

There are pro and cons for both.
I personally do not like cordova and I have worked with cordova. I have great hopes for xamarin, but my exerience with xamarin and C# is quite limited...yet ;)
It is easy to build apps with cordova in terms of programming and many programmer have knowledge of HTML5, CSS and JS. But it is very tedious to adjust it for the the different OS (android, ios). So the advantage, besides being available on Linux, would be that it might be easier to find people helping us with developing or mantaining it, but on the downside the development would also take more time because of the adjustments one have to make for each OS. And the result would most likely not give a nice user experience and to achieve a acceptable user experience one have to spend a lot of time. So, do we need an app which might not be attractive for users?

On the other hand, xamarin, will not be available on linux in the near future..is that already an knock-out criterion for you?
And the amount of developers being able to help is more limited. But if we look at the curent situtation. How likey is it to get help anyway?
But the advantage would be to have native-like apps, while reusing 80% of the code for all OS..
I will continue to work on the app, but it would be good to have at least a second helper.

What would you suggest?
Should we continue to talk about it here or maybe mail or skype?

imatge de jordi
Enviat per jordi el ds., 10/28/2017 - 05:43

Thank you Lisa.

My understanding is that the mobile app and the Labdoo platform are independent, so they don't need to run (nor be developed) on the same platform. In that case, can you develop the app in Windows using Xamarin while the Labdoo platform is developed/run on Linux? They will interface via REST, so these are separate projects and each can use a different architecture?

If that's true, then you can perfectly do the development of the app in Windows using Xamarin, there is no requirement or need to do that on Linux. What i was saying is that trying to install the Labdoo social network on windows is not trivial and i am not sure why that's needed since the app and Labdoo are separate projects interfacing via REST. Let me know if that makes sense, thanks.

imatge de lisabell
Enviat per lisabell el ds., 10/28/2017 - 07:20

Yes, you are right, they don't need to be devloped on the same plattform, but for developing an app with xamarin you need a test environment where the labdoo drupal backend is available.
So this ticket should be about documenting how to set that up, so that you can start developing or maintaining the app. I was not planning on installing the labdoo project directly on my windows OS :) but on writing a documentation on how to use it on windows with installing a vm and on the vm install ubuntu and how to connect the host with the guest. I should have make that clearer, but this ticket was just ment to be an reminder for me to do that so that future helper will have a detailed explanaiton on how to set all up on windows, including the labdoo project. :)

imatge de lisabell
Enviat per lisabell el ds., 10/28/2017 - 07:20

I adjusted the title :)
Thanks for your feedback.
I just want to mention that with cordova you would develop one frontend for each device and web!. So then you would just need to develop on one plattform. It has advantages.. But let me try the xamarin approach first and then we can talk again about the frameworks and I will not complete this ticket here before that anyway :=)