Is Chromebook a plausible target for xojo android?

Targets Android
21

I am, unfortunately, ignorant of anything Linux, so I am hoping those more intimate can help me a bit. From the discussion so far, there seem to be three possible ways for code written in xojo to come up and run on a Chromebook.

  1. Linux is activated on Chromebook and the Linux distribution of the xojo desktop development environment is installed. A xojo desktop app is loaded. It runs. (I am used to needing some #If #Endif brackets in my current desktop code to go back and forth between OS X and windows, but not many. Is the situation similar with Linux?)

  2. A pro license running on OS X or windows generates a compiled Linux executable. Steps are taken to prepare a Chromebook to run such executables. It is loaded. It runs.

  3. An executable from the android version of xojo is loaded into the google play store. It is called from a Chromebook. It runs.

Clearly, the work involved in option 3 is all on the xojo side. I am not involved in option 1. That makes option 2 interesting at this point. It would involve work on the Chromebook side to make the necessary setup easy. Could it ever be the case that desktop executables become acceptable in the play store?

22

You are mising up things. Changing the Chromebook into the Developper Mode is another thing. This gives you access to the root of ChromeOS. The Linux Developement Environement is just having ChromeOS activating its virtual machine abilities. This doesn’t affect the security of the machine like the Developer Mode, which is a much more complex process.

Regards, Antoine

23
  1. Yes. But the Xojo IDE doesn’t run well on ChromeOS. Lots of (small) things not working. And the

  1. Yes. But it’s the same step must be executed for 1. as the Xojo IDE is actually the Linux version running. And it’s just ONE step, installing the LDE (Linux Developper Environement).

  2. Yes, but I have never (yet) tried to run an Android app by Xojo as such.

The Chromebook Linux Developer Environnement is basically transforming your ChromeOS in a dual OS where ChromeOS and Linux Debian live (for the user) at the same level, intergrated in the user environement. Note that nothing from Xojo IDE or environnement must be installed/configured. You basically just copy your « compiled for Linux » app on the Chrome machine, and run it. It appears as a normal app beside all the Android/ChromeOS apps. In fact, a user can’t distinguish them appart visually.

No. Because the LDE is not something availabe in phone/tablet. It’s particular to ChromeOS.
Note that this could change, as now, you can install, in certain phone/tablet, ChromeOS as a virtual machine.

Regards, Antoine

24

Nope. It was a necessary step when I did it few years ago. Dev mode was necessary to “install” Linux, use ADB, etc.

25

Well, before 2018.

However, in 2018 Google announced that desktop Linux apps were officially coming to ChromeOS. The main benefit claimed by Google of their official Linux application support is that it can run without enabling developer mode, keeping many of the security features of ChromeOS.

Regards, Antoine

1 Like
26

Probably I’ll buy another Chromebook when Xojo gets the ability to build “native” Android apps for it and Tablets, and will check how easy it will be the Linux support at that time.

27

The LDE on Chromebook is great and well integrated with ChromeOS.
For the Xojo IDE, it’s still buggy with Wayland, which ChromeOS uses.

On Xojo Linux, the DesktopHTMLViewer is also buggy. So the Xojo with Linux still has a few quirks, but overall, it works well.

Regards, Antoine

28

Not enough for me. I’ll only opt for the native options, as Android, when available. :wink:

29

As I try to sort through all this new information, I am now back to very simple questions. I can take one of my xojo desktop apps and compile it for (64 bit) Linux. I get two folders (libraries and my resources) plus a file that OS X calls a Unix executable. I can move these three to the Linux folder of my Chromebook. Is the Chromebook supposed to be able to execute the compiled file? If so, how can I go about it?

30

When I run my linux app on Chromebook w/ LDE, I run it from the command line.

But is you want it to be in the menu of Chrome, you got to write a .desktop file.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/desktop_entries

Write the file in your app folder (example for Xojo: /opt/xojo/xojo2024r1.1/2024r1.1_62582.desktop),
but this file must be copied in /usr/share/applications/.

Regards, Antoine

31

I am coming to understand why xojo, and Paul, are staying at arm’s length on these issues. Things seem to be changing constantly on the chromeOS front. The current version seems to give a “crosh” prompt that is feckless. No sudo. No VT-2. No installing chromebrew.

It may be that it is still possible to run a compiled Linux executable, but I have not seen instructions on exactly how to do so.

Chromebook promises to be huge for xojo once things settle down. The combination of its Linux capabilities and its android capabilities look very powerful. Alas, not quite yet?