fetch-gaia-app

A utility for fetching a development version of a Gaia app.

Probably only useful if you are a UX person working with developers on Gaia.

Prerequisites

1. You need to be developing Gaia. If you do not have Gaia set up, then do not bother trying to use this tool.

2. Install Node. It runs this tool. There are easy to use installers for the major OS platforms.

Installation

Open a command line terminal window and type:

npm install -g fetch-gaia-app

This only works after Node has been installed.

Fetching an app

Make sure you are in your local git clone of Gaia. This tool will look for an apps directory in the directory where it runs.

Fetch from an URL

Call the tool with the URL to the ZIP of the app, and pass the name of the regular Gaia app that relates to it. Example of fetching a version of the email app from an URL location:

fetch-gaia-app http://example.com/temp/bug111111.zip email

Fetch from a GitHub branch

This can take a while, without any useful feedback, since it fetches a full zip snapshot of all of Gaia. On a fast network connection, it can be around two minutes before seeing updates in the UI.

The URL fetching is recommended instead. However, if the developer has not created a ZIP file for the app, this approach can be used.

The basic format of the command is:

fetch-gaia-app username branchid appname

Where:

• username is the GitHub user name. They must have a gaia fork under their username for this to work.
• branchid the GitHub branch to fetch from the user name's gaia fork.
• appname the app that should be fetched.

Example: To fetch the jrburke's fga branch version of the email app:

fetch-gaia-app jrburke fga email

Installing an app

When the app is fetched for the very first time, then it needs to be installed via:

make GAIA_OPTIMIZE=1 reset-gaia

NOTE: This command will delete any information you have saved on the phone.

Once the app has been installed once, then after fetching a new version of it with the same fetch-gaia-app command, you can just run:

make GAIA_OPTIMIZE=1 install-gaia APP=newappname

Where newappname will be displayed at the end of the fetch command. It should also be the name of the new directory in the apps folder.

NOTE: Each time fetch-gaia-app is run, it will delete the previous version of the same app that it fetched before placing the newly fetched version in the apps directory. So do not make modifications in the fetched app unless you back them up before running the fetch-gaia-app command again.

Developer notes

Making a ZIP for URL installation

1. Do your modifications in your branch, and then make sure you are in the gaia/apps directory to run the ZIP command. Name the ZIP after the bug or branch you are working on. For instance, to make a ZIP file of email app for bug 111111:

   zip -r bug111111.zip email/*

Then upload that zip file somewhere publicly accessible. Pass that URL to the UX person, asking them to run a command like this:

fetch-gaia-app http://example.com/temp/bug111111.zip email

Troubleshooting

If you see this error occur:

Error: Unable to find end of central directory record

It means the tool could not correctly unzip the downloaded file. Usually just trying the command again will work.