First try to port a Qt application to Sailfish

-
So last week I prepared v0.3 and put it to git. Yesterday I tried to port it to Sailfish as was the original plan. I went at it as below: 
I used an existing test application to get the required files and project settings. I added them to my project. This part included copying various tidbits to the .pro file. Also included is copying over folders for RPM, translations, icons etc. 
Then I went through the files and updated the file names wherever needed to reflect my app. This gave me a build which built successfully using the mer-arm toolchain.
Now to get it running on the device. I plugged in the Aqua Fish to Laptop with microUSB cord, and enabled debugging. Then tried to debug-run the app. First problem - debug-run doesn't work. I got error as - gdbserver not found. On googling for this, found out I need gdbserver installed on device and it will probably take a while since I'm not familiar with this functionality of Sailfish. So I decided to skip debug-run, and go with only run. 
This worked fine but the app won't launch and I got some qml errors on console. After going through them I learned couple of things - 1. Sailfish SDK doesn't yet have support for Qt Quick Controls, confirmed this by going to SDK's qml folder and found only Quick 2.0 qml's there. 2. Debugging QML's is a real pain. There were times when I wanted to give up. Going through the errors one by one, finding dependencies and then fixing it, and then verifying the fix, it's exhausting. One problem which was my doing, was not checking in advance what QML things are supported on Sailfish. 
Anyway after couple of hours of hair pulling and redoing the code, the app did launch on AquaFish. One major deployment related issue is I need to figure out the location for the database, because it's not getting deployed right now. Other major issue is UI related. My app used flexible positioning but Sailfish UI expects some stuff like padding and widths according to theme guidelines and so these all need change. Plus most of the screen looked white with barely visible gray fonts - this also needs fixing. I wish I had a screenshot to post here to show how bad it looks, but it's just some stuff that needs fixing. 
So well that's my experience porting my app to Sailfish OS. It was good experience, in that I got some hands on the various files related to packaging the app, and I got more hands on Silica Controls. So my goal is to get the app working and push a Sailfish OS compatible v0.4 to git. Lets see if I can nail it!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Morning Quotes

-
Image
Source: www.brainyquote.com   I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. Winston Churchill   Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening. Mohandas Gandhi   I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning. Benjamin Franklin  
Read more

QCalendarWidget CSS Stylesheeting

-
Recently I had to implement a calendar for a TouchScreen application. I resorted to css to modify the calendar widget's appearance so that it would be more accessible. Following is the code that enabled me to get a proper calendar. calendar->setStyleSheet("QMenu { font-size:20px; width: 300px; left: 20px; }"     "QToolButton {icon-size: 48px, 48px; font: 20px; height: 70px; width: 100px; }"     "QAbstractItemView {selection-background-color: rgb(255, 174, 0);}"     "QToolButton::menu-indicator{ width: 50px;}"     "QToolButton::menu-indicator:pressed,"     "QToolButton::menu-indicator:open{ top:10px; left: 10px;}"     "QTableView { font: 30px; }"     "QSpinBox { width: 100px; font: 20px;}"     "QSpinBox::up-button { width:40px;}"     "QSpinBox::down-button { width:40px;}");
Read more

Selecting new phone plan

-
I use a Reliance Jio SIM as my one and only cellphone number. I used to have another, but I found little use for that. So I discontinued that other SIM card. It was a Vodafone SIM and I had bought it thinking I would be using it when I visit my hometown. Turns out it's not usable there. So adios. Coming back to Jio, it was working so far so good for a while. And it was quite cheap. Then they increased the fares about 4-5 months ago. And it was costing ~Rs 7 per day. This was for unlimited Jio-Jio calling, ~300minutes free to other telcos, and 1.5GB daily cellular data. Now I got home internet, so I thought to cut costs on this. The current plan goes for INR555 for 84 days. This includes 1.4GB 4G cellular data per day, 300 min calling to other telcos, and jio-jio free. That's Rs 6.6 per day. Now I'm not even using 30minutes calling per day. And due to home internet my cellular usage has gone down. So I decided to go for some other cheaper plan. This one is INR1299 for 336 da...
Read more