Kivy Sucks... No it really does

[Gregory Strydom]

I am so sick and tired of Kivy's crap.  Why does this have to be so difficult? The setup i had was working. Now i try run the file and i get the crappy message, Unable to get a window, abort. WHAT THE HELL?!!! I've changed nothing!!! Altered nothing!!! IT was working!!! Now its not!! Nothing has updated or been changed!! WTF!!!???!!!??? 

And this is not the first time!!! I'm sick and tired of this crap!!! Kivy has got to be the the worst library/framework i've ever worked with!! Period. Never have I battled so much to get something so simple working!! WTF!!!???!!!

After how many years and they still cant get this sorted? But they are quick to implement new features, but cant fix the old ones? What a joke. I've worked with kivy for awhile, and am always getting this problem, but try to persevere. Now im thinking, what for? When there is so much BETTER available. Just look at Google. Countless posts with the same problem. Unbelievable.

[Mark Melvin]

Wow!  You should ask for your money back...

Maybe if you post an error message and example, someone can try to help you (although I doubt anyone has much motivation to spend their time on it after that post).

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[Gregory Strydom]

On Wednesday, 19 July 2017 04:48:38 UTC+2, Mark Melvin wrote:

Wow!  You should ask for your money back...

Wow, how clever. Oh trust me, I would shoot myself if i actually paid for this garbage. I would GLADLY pay for something that WORKS. Whats the point of asking for help? So i can get asked if I've installed all the dependencies? Or some other obvious thing? 

On Wednesday, 19 July 2017 04:48:38 UTC+2, Mark Melvin wrote:

   (although I doubt anyone has much motivation to spend their time on it after that post)

    I never asked for help. Just pointed out that Kivy sucks. 

[Matthew Einhorn]

I'm sorry you feel this way, and I understand that it can be quite frustrating when things are not working, but you have to consider that we are a small group of developers who volunteer for this project who have to support many platforms. What this means is that like any open source software, when things go wrong you need to be prepared to spend some time either fixing things yourself or with us to figure out what is going wrong. I would love it if we had an AI that can track down issues and possibly fix it, but unfortunately currently we need to do this manually, which means that we can only help users when we have free time and if they are willing to engage with us until we can figure out what is wrong.

Generally, the missing window provider happens when you're missing a dependency, when there's a dependency clash e.g. if you use kivy in an unsupported python distribution and there's some binary clash, or if there's a graphics issue and you don't have a supported g driver. That's is why you see many posts in google because that error tends to be a catch all when something goes wrong. Also, kivy does have minimum requirements for graphics drivers. But it is hard to debug without a trace and more info.

I suppose kivy or open source is not suited for everyone. If you find you want the immediate personal support, perhaps you should use something where you could pay for professional support, like qt. But clearly kivy works for many people, so it's just a matter of finding the right toolkit that works for you.

[Gregory Strydom]

What a decent person. (Matham) No, really. 

Thank you for explaining and actually UNDERSTANDING, and not having cocky answers like a certain Mark Melvin idiot. I agree, i really need to move on from Kivy. I tried to like it, i really did. I know it means nothing but i even bought books to try and get a better understanding. There are just two many problems though. I dont have TIME to fight with Kivy anymore. 3 hours yesterday, countless downloads and still nothing. I was angry when i posted my initial post, and apologize for saying Kivy is garbage. I really do appreciate how much effort the devs have put in, especially of their own time. It's admirable. But i just don't have the time to fight anymore. If i have to move on, so be it. Good luck Kivy, all the best. That not sarcastic, i mean it.

Cheers.

On Wednesday, 19 July 2017 05:26:02 UTC+2, matham wrote:

I'm sorry you feel this way, and I understand that it can be quite frustrating when things are not working, but you have to consider that we are a small group of developers who volunteer for this project who have to support many platforms. What this means is that like any open source software, when things go wrong you need to be prepared to spend some time either fixing things yourself or with us to figure out what is going wrong. I would love it if we had an AI that can track down issues and possibly fix it, but unfortunately currently we need to do this manually, which means that we can only help users when we have free time and if they are willing to engage with us until we can figure out what is wrong.

Generally, the missing window provider happens when you're missing a dependency, when there's a dependency clash e.g. if you use kivy in an unsupported python distribution and there's some binary clash, or if there's a graphics issue and you don't have a supported g driver. That's is why you see many posts in google because that error tends to be a catch all when something goes wrong. Also, kivy does have minimum requirements for graphics drivers. But it is hard to debug without a trace and more info.

I suppose kivy or open source is not suited for everyone. If you find you want the immediate personal support, perhaps you should use something where you could pay for professional support, like qt. But clearly kivy works for many people, so it's just a matter of finding the right toolkit that works for you.

On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 10:48 PM, Mark Melvin <mark....@gmail.com> wrote:

Wow!  You should ask for your money back...

Maybe if you post an error message and example, someone can try to help you (although I doubt anyone has much motivation to spend their time on it after that post).

On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 10:34 PM, Gregory Strydom <gregory.s...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am so sick and tired of Kivy's crap.  Why does this have to be so difficult? The setup i had was working. Now i try run the file and i get the crappy message, Unable to get a window, abort. WHAT THE HELL?!!! I've changed nothing!!! Altered nothing!!! IT was working!!! Now its not!! Nothing has updated or been changed!! WTF!!!???!!!??? 

And this is not the first time!!! I'm sick and tired of this crap!!! Kivy has got to be the the worst library/framework i've ever worked with!! Period. Never have I battled so much to get something so simple working!! WTF!!!???!!!

After how many years and they still cant get this sorted? But they are quick to implement new features, but cant fix the old ones? What a joke. I've worked with kivy for awhile, and am always getting this problem, but try to persevere. Now im thinking, what for? When there is so much BETTER available. Just look at Google. Countless posts with the same problem. Unbelievable.

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[ZenCODE]

Hi

Matham pretty much said it. And there is quite an initial learning curve getting into kivy, but once you do, it can produce great results.

I'm not sure if you're using Windows, but if you are give this one last try:

https://github.com/KeyWeeUsr/KivyInstaller

It makes installing on Windows easy, but Linux and Mac still require some system knowledge and fiddling. Either way, good. luck

[Michael Kramer]

Hi Gregory,

I too feel your pain and the graphics driver issue, and it's dependencies have always been tricky.

Is it possible that some other app that depends on OpenGL drivers, or the graphics card driver, has been updated?  Kivy may never have been updated but I suppose that some other update to the Windows installation or new apps could be breaking the OpenGL dependency.

So far the only big issue we have seen is with Windows installations that do not support the right OpenGL version, and with normal windows operation on most modern PCs this seems to not be a problem.  The only problem that has come up so far for us is if I want to run a Kivy app via remote desktop - which to my understanding does not support more recent versions of OpenGL

As an alternative to using the KeeWee KivyInstaller I have been using a stand alone version of WinPython from here: https://winpython.github.io/  and into that package I installed Kivy and all of the dependencies. It also includes things like scipy, matplotlib, Spyder, pyQt, numpy, sphinx, etc - so it is a pretty complete self-contained package that can run from anywhere on the hard drive and doesn't conflict with any other python versions that you may have installed.

To accompany that I am using something like the Kivy Launcher apk for android and a modified version of a Kivy iOS app that is similar in that we do not have to build a native Android or iOS app each time our python files change.  On iOS the 'launcher' points to python/.kv files that are placed in the app's Documents folder - it of course wouldn't pass the apple approval process for an app to be distributed via the apple app store, but for in-house development it works great.  Once the iOS launcher app is installed there is no need to use XCode and the python files can be copied over from iTunes running on OSX or Windows, so there also no dependency on requiring a mac for development.

This means that our developers can focus on their python code and never have to deal with the details of Kivy or how it gets included into the different platform specific implementations - for any platform the developers can work on their high-level python implementations on Windows and then drag-and-drop .py and .kv files into the mobile launcher apps.  (But as ZenCode mentioned, getting everything to behave nicely on OSX is still a bit tricky due to the SDL framework dependencies).

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[Martin Pishpecki]

Every time I need to make new dev environment I go through same problems. Always some broken packages, always something missing, always 3 hours gone.

Started to build a POS project on one machine and today I want to move it to another. Guess what, 3 hours later, no installation.

Maybe its a bad idea to continue with Kivy.

I am wondering, did any of the developers just try following their instructions and install kivy on Ubuntu 16 or 18.

[Patrick Yuan]

I had the same issue on Ubuntu 18.04. What worked for me is installing kivy through pip with the requirement 1.10.1. Much easier to get it running on windows though

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[Elliot Garbus]

Martin,

Clearly you are frustrated, but without a more specific question, I'm not sure how anyone can help you.  I'm just a Kivy user, not a developer of library.  I have been using it successfully across 3 projects over the last 10 months or so.  I've been working with an associate that does development on linux, while I've been doing development on Windows.  We have not had any significant issues across Windows or Linux. 

Kivy is a complex cross-platform system and like most open source projects staffed by volunteers.  If you would like improvements, you need to make the commitment to be more involved, participate in the users forum, submit changes, including fixes to documentation.   At the very least, be polite.

I'm grateful for the work that the Kivy team has done with Kivy, the code, documentation and scope are all remarkable. 

There is no room for being rude or short tempered. 

[Quan Lin]

I'm just another average Kivy user.

Making cross-platform Apps was hard, is harder and going to be harder and harder. 

The developers of Kivy are those of the smartest and bravest people on the earth.

They bring hope to the cross-platform jobs and set an excellent example, volunteerly!

That's what super heroes do.

They are my super heroes.

[Will Tejeda]

I wouldn't have been able to make apps ig it weren't for kivy 

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[Martin Pishpecki]

I apologise if my response seamed rude. That was not my intention. I responded to a message that brings up a good point.

If you are going to invest a lot of time as a developer to learn a new framework you should be sure you are not waisting it away. Maybe spend it learning other frameworks. Installation of kivy is a major problem. Spending so much time installing and troubleshooting instead of learning to develop apps, will make you only an expert in installing Kivy.

I am fine with a installation that will say this is only tested on these operating systems with following version, anything else is maybe possible.

What happens in the future? Does this gets worse? I have one machine where I somehow setup Kivy development environment. Should I continue learning Kivy? Should I not waste any more time because this looks risky and unstable.

Community is always important for these kind of projects. Just give us one way of installation and one linux distribution where we know it will work every time and there will be more people building the community. Who knows how many developers came and left because installation made them rethink the stability and reliability.

Make a page where community can contribute by making detailed instructions on how to install on specific OS. Anything that bring back conference that this is worth your while.

[Horace Johnson]

Agreed.  I just gave up on it.  After three years of fighting with it, I finally had enough knowledge of the Pros and Cons to develop a professional app, which would have meant donations for kivy the moment my app started getting sales.  Because somebody had to create broken updates for Buildozer and P4a, I can no longer make an apk.  How can developers of kivy not know the latest Buildozer is broken if they actually tested it?  Not to mention Google does update the APIs and stuff and therefore kivy should be able to keep up.  Hell, the app doesn't even have in-app billing.  I just tried the P4a install since the newest Buildozer is broken (why 3.4 by default...really?) and P4a is just as broken.

It's like those flaunt as kivy devs don't actually want other people using it, so they put up broken updated versions knowing you can't exactly roll back to the previous.  If you want to develop apps, you have to learn c and unity or get the gamemaker 8 studio for about 100 USD.  Another thing that bugs me is the fact there's so many faces on the devs list but yet very little presence in the kivy user group.  Hell, I even emailed on of the people who's supposed to be responsible for kivy and he stated he stopped working on kivy long ago.

So upsetting because I had a working Buildozer but trusted the devs and updated it only to lose three or four years of kivy dedication.  It would have been nice if python users could have joined the app world but it's not so and I'm now forced to go back to desktop/laptop platform, where I wish I would have stayed to begin with.  And oh my God!!!!  Why is there so many new versions of kivy coming out when you can't even build an apk!?  Seriously!  Kivy is useless without Buildozer working correctly and downloading the latest google requirements.   Everything kivy on the net is just one big front.

Not fair for the devs to call users idiots and trolls just because they're telling the truth about kivy.  Instead, do something about it and fix Buildozer.  What's the point in building apps you can never compile into an apk?

[Alexander Taylor]

Just to clear up a few things:

> How can developers of kivy not know the latest Buildozer is broken if they actually tested it?

The answer is that we do test it, and it does work. For instance, I just tried buildozer from scratch on an almost clean Lubuntu, and it worked fine.

When it fails it's often due to environments or setups that we haven't tested, which is unfortunate but usually resolvable. I'm not clear what the issue was for you.

> Another thing that bugs me is the fact there's so many faces on the devs list but yet very little presence in the kivy user group

We've tended to be pretty generous with leaving people on the list after they're no longer spending time on Kivy. In several cases, people have become less active but still made occasional valuable contributions. Importantly, being a Kivy developer doesn't actually require spending any time on this mailing list - of the active developers, only a small number actively keep up to date here.

The most active help channel is the discord (formerly irc), which I normally recommend going to for questions that don't attract interest on the mailing list.

> Why is there so many new versions of kivy coming out when you can't even build an apk!?

I don't think there actually are many new versions of Kivy coming out, we make fewer releases than we probably should. And even if there are, Kivy and buildozer/python-for-android are independent projects, releases for one imply nothing about the other, they don't even necessarily have the same active developers.

> Kivy is useless without Buildozer working correctly

Kivy is also used on platforms other than Android, both desktop operating systems and iOS.

> Not fair for the devs to call users idiots and trolls just because they're telling the truth about kivy

Do you have a link about this happening?

[Robert Flatt]

Firstly I believe Kivy and particularly p4a are wonderful achievements, porting Python to non-POSIX systems is remarkable. That said there are issues withe the Android/ios tools , particularly for new users; and if new users don't get it there wont be a user base.

One could say this is a p4a/buildozer issue not a Kivy issue, but it seems that most people here are using Kivy because of the path the phones.(There are other desktop alternatives)

1) I get that p4a is a work in progress, but the lack of usable version control means the user experience is like building a sand castle at the beach - every so often a wave comes in and you have to rebuild something. This experience alone is enough to generate the s-word in the title if you try to rebuild a project after 6 months.

2) Documentation is obsolete. One of the most viewed posts in the user group lists the current (12/2018) Ubuntu dependencies for p4a. (It took me a week, and many Ubuntu installs, to reverse engineer). Current dependencies not documented ?! really ?

3) Testing is woefully inadequate. I tried to build all the 'requirements' earlier this year - initially about 1/3 built - after some work with the developers that increased to about 2/3. Clearly there is inadequate regression testing, they should all build. (Of course the build dependencies were not documented.)

4) Buildozer tries to address the issues with abstraction, great if it always works, but it doesn't. The user is left with error messages from buried tools which are not understood - abstraction fails.

5) The core issue is that p4a/buildozer is a tool builder experience, not a tool user experience.

Suggestion:

The architecture of p4a/buildozer is a cause of the 'moving target', and 'multiple environment' problems. So do less.

Do this: python-for-android should be renamed python-for-android-dev; a new python-for-android would include nothing that requires build-tools (just Gradle to link the user files?), so just Python, Java, and Linux object files. The new version would support fixed (latest?) SDK and NDK versions ONLY. The user experience becomes running a tool, rather than building a tool. So no longer a "-dev" experience.

Wake up! The howl here is real, look at the number of views on this thread. Fix the issues or never leave the early adopter phase, the destiny of this project will become the land of the living dead.

I get that people are working hard, and that there are limited resources; but perhaps some of that effort is misplaced?

Thank you for your attention.

[Jeff Smith]

I have to agree that the developer experience using Kivy/p4a/Buildozer is less than stellar. For the record I have been developing on Linux and Windows for 30 year and have experience with many of the standard development toolkits for these environments (i.e. Visual Studio and Eclipse). I have been programming in Python for over a decade and have used cx_Freeze to create frozen, portable applications for Windows and Linux.  I almost program exclusively in Python these days and I love it. So when I thought about developing an Android app, I looked here first so as to leverage my existing knowledge rather than get into the Android Studio / Java world. Unfortunately, after a couple of months I have been unsuccessful at getting even the simplest working hello world app installed on my phone. Most of the complaints I've seen in this thread are valid. All my attempts at using Buildozer have been a failure, even when done from scratch on a clean Ubuntu VM. The closest I have gotten has been to use the (badly out of date) Python-for Android documentation to use that tool directly. I was finally able to create a Bash script to turn a clean Ubuntu system into a working APK generator. Sadly the app loads a blank screen on an actual phone. When I posted a question in this forum about what might be wrong, I was told to submit a GitHub bug. I asked whether I should post against Kivy, p4a, or Buildozer and got no response.

In summary the basic frustrations I believe are valid and are repeated constantly in multiple questions in this forum:

1. The documentation is so out of date as to be useless and actually hurts more than it helps.

2. The whole framework is fragile and unstable and will fail with useless error messages that don't help diagnose the issue.

3. The support from this forum is lacking and the responses frequently flip and/or combative.

I find this situation unfortunate because I have been a Python evangelist at every place I've worked and would love to see it be taken seriously for mobile app development. However, I am starting to think that Kivy/p4a/Buildozer will not be the path forward unless the community can start to get a handle on solving these problems.

Maybe it's time to look at Dart/Flutter...

On Tuesday, July 18, 2017 at 10:34:56 PM UTC-4, Gregory Strydom wrote:

[Elliot Garbus]

Let's retire this thread... the title is offensive.  Kivy is the product of a volunteer team, delivering a great product.  

Clearly there are a number of issues around Android.

There are a set of constructive comments below, how do we get to an action plan?

Suggestion:
    Start an new thread, Kivy-Android get well plan.  (I would do this but I don't develop for Android.)
    Kick off a discussion on the discord server building support for the idea of building a get well plan.
    Establish a set of actions, and engage broader community participation in the get well plan.
    Execute

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[Robert Flatt]

Let's retire this thread... the title is offensive.

The comments here are not about an individual's feelings about language, look past language. They are about users's experiences with the tool, that is important information. It is a mistake to start a new thread as we will loose the points made here. An action plan to fix the 'Kivy on mobile' issues is an excellent idea.

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[alessandro bonvicini]

I think that kiyy as  a very  ripid learning curve. You  have to fight...but  at the end you have a powerfull toolset that you can use to make great thinks in short time. I am really enthusiasts for kivy e for all its flaws   . it is a great platform  on which make myself stronger and stronger.

If you need something more profiteable, in commercial context, you  can use xamarin i think.

But for me kivy is great, i suggest you to ask ,ask ...ask again to the worderful community that is behind kivy.

[alessandro bonvicini]

If i can give you an hints, i suggest to use only one development platform ...in my case i use linux lubuntu and install all latest develpment from gihub...

I make some little apps for android...sometimes it happens some  error BUT normally i find a valid suggestion and make things work in  an hour or two. After sometime you have a working development platform on linux...if you have a fast computer you can reduce the time for compilation  , try and error, of a 10 factor....when you have a working platform you can start to dive the inner of python for android , recipes and so  on .. those are really complex but for me are wonder

[Daniel Mahlangu]

What would be best for Kivy is that the developer post what is required to build an android APK (step-by-step) and versions of the required stuff. Because currently, following the available guide  does not help.

[stas.zy...@gmail.com]

On Friday, April 19, 2019 at 11:19:42 AM UTC+2, Daniel Mahlangu wrote:

What would be best for Kivy is that the developer post what is required to build an android APK (step-by-step) and versions of the required stuff. Because currently, following the available guide  does not help.

That's a great idea !

Please go to this site and ask them:

https://opencollective.com/kivy