Developing a core shell protocol

[Pekka Paalanen]

On Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:45:12 -0800
Nick Kisialiou <kisialiou at gmail.com> wrote:

> Actually, there is a value in clients that need 2 shells at the same time.
> Think about an SDK or a development environment for a phone OS. The
> development environment would work in a desktop shell because it is more
> convenient for developers to write code in an IDE on a desktop/laptop. At
> the same time, it would dispatch the phone app to the phone shell for
> execution or debugging. There are other examples as well, e.g. running
> regression tests of the phone OS on a desktop/server, debugging phone
> hardware or networking bugs, etc. There is probably not much value for the
> end users, but for developers and for quality of the apps/OS there is a lot
> of benefit.

Hi Nick,

I don't think that is a good idea. I bet the SDK would not want to be
at the mercy of whatever compositor the user is running for his desktop
session. The SDK emulator probably wants to provide the phone
compositor, so it can guarantee its features and behaviour. I also
believe the emulated compositor coming with the SDK would include
debugging features which would not be present in a desktop session
compositor, tailored for the specific target OS.

Also, note that we were talking about a single client using two shells
at the same time. You will probably run your IDE and the phone app in
separate processes, so they cannot be the same client, no?

As for regression tests, hardware and networking debugging etc. you
mention, I really do not understand how they are relevant here. Don't
you run those on the phone or a VM?

The purpose of having a phone shell interface available on desktop
compositor would be just for being able to run phone apps. I don't see
it as useful for developing phone apps for a phone, only for phone apps
for the desktop. The phone shell interface on a desktop compositor
would not pop up a phone emulator but try to integrate the phone app
with the desktop environment the best it can, i.e. turn the phone app
into a desktop app, in my opinion.


Thanks,
pq