Package Ubo App for MacOS

[zytegalaxy]

Technically Ubo App runs on MacOS right now and we have GUI, Mic, and Speakers working. there's a discussion here for adding Camera support at well.

This can significantly lower barrier to adoption and let users purchase the hardware for the enhanced sensory experience and communication (IR, special radio, or sensor) that are more hardware specific.

However, I think the AI features can be delivered effectively on Mac as well.

I was wondering what would it take to make an .app bundle for Mac. It would be great if anyone can weigh in on this.

[sassanh]

Things to have in mind:

1. We also want Linux and Windows installers.

2. Unfortunately there is no way to install ubo-app on any operating system with a simple pip install command, because it needs multiple packages running in different virtualenvs among other pip incompatibilities.

3. The system manager, running as root in ubo pod, providing a socket channel for the ubo-app to connect to it, is mostly obsolete in desktop environments, specially non-debian environments, and specially non-linux environments, and specially in non-unix environments:

   • These features of system-manager are obsolete in non-ubo-pod environments:
     • Audio (which handles stuff related to wm8960 driver)
     • Infrared
     • LED
     • Reset button (the tiny black button on the back of the pod)
   • These features of system-manager need new implementation for non-debian environments. The community can help to extend our support for other distros. For the moment we can fall back to ubo-notifications, asking the user to manually install/uninstall packages and start/stop services.
     • package-manager - we may consider brew for macOS, probably through community support
     • services (in case the linux distro is not using systemctl)
     • docker (only its installation)
   • These features of system-manager need new implementation for non-linux environments. Since implementing a system-manager or something similar for macOS/Windows is a big thing to do, I say lets see if these features are really required in those environments before going for it.
     • hotspot - Maybe it can be useful in mini-pcs running Windows or Mac Minis runing macOS
     • users - I don't see much value in having it for macOS or Windows
     • update
     • docker (start/stop)

4. We probably will use our install.sh with minor modifications for all Linux distros and provide custom installers for macOS and Windows. A .app file copied to /Applications should be enough for most of the features to work. For Windows we will need a custom installer.

[sassanh]

To make ubo accessible in different environments, we can consider providing ubo through these channels, providing them in our CD pipeline in GitHub actions:

• RPi image (already created in GitHub actions)
• Installer script
  • Already working for Debian systems
  • We should support other Linux distros
  • In macOS, it will simply download the .app file or .dmg file and install it
  • In Microsoft Windows it will simply download the installer .exe or .msi and install it
• Docker image
  • advantage: it is accessible in any environment and it is cheap to maintain.
  • disadvantage: it will have limited functionality and will need to be connected to from a browser. I know there is a way to connect from docker to a X server running on the host machine, macOS and Windows can run X too, so we should be able to provide native GUI (versus in browser GUI) in all operating systems.
• .app or .dmg for macOS: the default python version in macOS is 3.9, so we need to include python and everything in our bundle (we need 3.11 at least)
• Windows installer (mentioned for the sake of completeness, no priority for the moment)

Suggested roadmap:

1. Provide the docker image and publish it in hub.docker.com in our CI, we should be able to achieve it fast
2. Provide a feature flag mechanism, maintaining a list of supporting features in different environments:
   • It should automatically enable/disable features in code based on the environment the app is running in
   • It should provide an automatically generated checklist in GitHub/Website so that people can track which features are supported in which environments
3. Provide macOS application
4. Improve install.sh to support more Linux distributions and detect when it is run in macOS and fall back to downloading the application
5. Try to support more features in more environments and add Windows installer over time with the help of community