Launchpad entry: unity8-legacy-app-support
Created: 21-Oct-2014
Contributors: Stephen M. Webb
Packages affected:
Rationale
A large pool of existing applications built on Ubuntu and X11 exists and is unlikely to move at a reasonable rate to newer Ubuntu technologies (Unity 8 and Mir). To retain the value proposition of Ubuntu running Unity 8, it is necessary to provide a mechanism to minimally support the existing legacy applications without modification.
This specification outlies the requirements and proposed solutions for providing this mechanism.
User stories
- a bespoke application used in an educational institution for student-teacher communication
- commercial (closed source) software
- applications packaged for other Linux distros ir Ubuntu flavours
Requirements
- install unmodified DEB packages into a system-image/click-based environment
- run legacy applications in a contained/isolated environment
- provide an X11 service for the legacy application, running on a Mir surface
- provide a minimum required session environment for the applications (eg. gsettings, environment variables)
- provide startup handshaking for the X server (server/window manager/renderer) and app startup
- provide a helper application to launch and monitor the application (tears down the runtime on application shutdown)
Specification Details
- have updated x.org+XMir packages available in a PPA
- push Xmir back end upstream to x.org
- modify DEB installation to use bindmount area and extract .desktop file
- changes for (SIGSTOP) startup sequencing (X11-WM-Renderer)
- create LXC stuff for bindmounting local dirs
- write helper app for launching/monitoring containner