Installing FLEx 8 on Linux

[Mark Simmons]

Hi all,

As far as I can tell, only FLEx version 9 is available for install on Linux. However, my team (the rest using windows) is using version 8 since we ran into problems when we tried to migrate to version 9. Is there a way to install FLEx version 8 on Linux?

[MarkS]

Hey Mark, thanks for asking about that. In the past, we have not been providing multiple stable FW versions for Linux, but this is the kind of thing that may need us to move in that direction.

FieldWorks 8.3.13 is available at packages.sil.org for Wasta/Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) and 16.04 (xenial). You should be able to install FieldWorks 8.3 easily if you are running one of those.

However, only FieldWorks 9 is available for Wasta/Ubuntu 20.04 (focal).

When we ship a new FieldWorks stable release, we overwrite the current release in the main area of packages.sil.org. That means that when FW 9 is shipped as a stable release on Linux, it will overwrite the FieldWorks 8.3 packages on packages.sil.org. But your message gives me pause to consider what we should do. The current plan has been to release FW 9 to the main area of packages.sil.org next week, so now is a good time to get FW 8.3 (and pin the version or something to prevent it from upgrading).

I think an important consideration in this is why your team is having trouble migrating to FieldWorks version 9. If it regards bugs or usability issues in the software, it will help to report them (via the Help menu), as the FieldWorks team will want to know about these problems and get them fixed.

If it regards difficulty with project data, you can contact FieldWorks support as well and they may be able to direct you to successfully upgrade your data and use FieldWorks 9.

[MarkS]

Mark,

By the way, it may be that you are only seeing FW 9 and not FW 8.3 because of having the 'Beta' (aka 'experimental') area of packages.sil.org enabled.

If you are using Wasta/Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) or 16.04 (xenial), and only have FieldWorks 9 available, you can try turning off the Beta ("experimental") repository of packages.sil.org. If you're not familiar with how to do that, see http://packages.sil.org/details.html under

    Install Beta SIL software > Turn off Beta SIL software repository

Don't be afraid to ask an IT friend for help (or reply here and I can provide more guidance). Fiddling with package repo selection can be a bit advanced.

Downgrading from Linux FieldWorks 9 to Linux FieldWorks 8.3 is not something we really ever exercise in testing, but it should be possible to do by turning off the Beta ("experimental") area of packages.sil.org, keeping the main non-Beta usage of packages.sil.org enabled, reloading repo package lists ("sudo apt update"), uninstalling fieldworks, fieldworks-applications, and flexbridge packages ("sudo apt remove fieldworks fieldworks-applications flexbridge"), and then installing fieldworks ("sudo apt install fieldworks").

In Wasta/Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) and 16.04 (xenial), this should result in having FieldWorks 8.3 installed.

In Wasta/Ubuntu 20.04 (focal), there is no FieldWorks 8.3 available to install, so don't bother with these steps if you are using Wasta/Ubuntu 20.04 (focal).

It will be very helpful to report any FieldWorks 9 bugs so FieldWorks 9 can work with projects like yours.

Mark

[Mark Simmons]

Hi Mark,

When I tried version 9 I had some stability issues (it crashed more) and also there was an error whenever I tried to import a .LIFT, which was the main dealbreaker as I was doing a lot of edits on the db through the LIFT API at the time. I see that version 9 is now stable, so the crashes might no longer be an issue, but I had made a lot of edits on version 9 which are now outdated with respect to our project stored in version 8. Thus, if we were to upgrade and these versions merged it would make us lose a lot of progress.

Being the only linux user on my team, I don't want to make the rest have to upgrade to accomodate me. Are you able to send me the install files for version 8? I had downgraded OS on my desktop to ubuntu 18.04 and managed to install FLEx version 8 before version 9 was put up, but I didn't get there in time to put it on my work laptop.

Thanks,

- Mark

[Mark Simmons]

PS. I tried disabling experimental software and it was never enabled in the first place, the only version I see is still version 9.

[Beth-docs Bryson]

Mark-

At the time you first asked, FW 9.0 was still a “release candidate”, so it was on “experimental” instead of “main”. However, since then it has been declared “stable”, so now it is the only one available on “main”.

Mark Strobert raised some interesting thoughts about whether FW 8.3 should continue to be available on Linux.  I am cross-posting to the FLEx-on-Linux list, because someone else asked something similar there.

-Beth

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[Mark Simmons]

I don't think I'm in the FLEx-on-Linux list, could you link the group for me?

[Andreas_Joswig]

Please me too!

Andreas

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/73f58a59-dc9f-49a2-a880-89db9e729687n%40googlegroups.com.

[Beth-docs Bryson]

The web link for the Google group is:

https://groups.google.com/g/flex-on-linux

If you request to join, please be sure to fill in the field that asks “What do you plan to use FLEx for?”  (or however the question is worded)  If you do, it will speed up your approval for being added to the group.

There are plenty of people who try to join the group because they use a tool from Adobe called FLEx.  Their memberships are not approved.

-Beth

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/9ce1a6a5-ac26-9be4-a9f4-4827eb8b8d10%40sil.org.

[Mark S]

Hey Mark,

>  I had made a lot of edits on version 9 which are now outdated with respect to our project stored in version 8. Thus, if we were to upgrade and these versions merged it would make us lose a lot of progress.

Right. I'm not sure how your projects are managed across these times of using FLEx 8 and FLEx 9, but: (1) projects are stored in something like ~/.local/share/fieldworks/Projects , and you can move any out of the way that you don't want FLEx to pick up and use.

(2) It will be good to not load up and use the project with your now-undesired changes that you had made when testing FLEx 9 before; are you expecting it to be difficult to prevent loading up this project?

By default, your computer would not have a  "FLEx 8 area for projects" and a "FLEx 9 area for projects" where you would need to be careful not to suddenly start using a "FLEx 9 area for projects" upon upgrading from FW 8 to FW 9. Rather, by default there is just the one area for projects that both FW 8 and FW 9 would look in. Maybe you can explain more if I'm not understanding?

> When I tried version 9 I had some stability issues (it crashed more) and also there was an error whenever I tried to import a .LIFT, which was the main dealbreaker as I was doing a lot of edits on the db through the LIFT API at the time. I see that version 9 is now stable, so the crashes might no longer be an issue

Well; maybe. :).  Know that the FieldWorks team very much needs to hear from its users about (A) what problems exist, and (B) what existing problems people are facing in their work. There are only about 1.3 consistent FW developers, with occasional other developers coming in to help now and then. So when you report problems, it greatly increases the likelihood of it getting fixed. And if you don't report a problem, it is less likely to get fixed.

(And even if you do report a problem, it still may not get fixed. Again, there are 1.3 consistent developers on FW right now.)

When you try FW 9 again some time, it will help a lot if you report the problems you experience (crashes, errors importing, etc), from the Help menu or from green crash dialogs.

(And you may have already done this, and if so I apologize if you had the experience of reporting problems and them not getting fixed.)

> Being the only linux user on my team, I don't want to make the rest have to upgrade to accomodate me. Are you able to send me the install files for version 8? I

Yes! Our conversation before prompted me to preserve the FW 8.3 packages before they got overwritten. I just made a note to post those for you, hopefully this week.

> PS. I tried disabling experimental software and it was never enabled in the first place, the only version I see is still version 9.

And at this point, FW 8 won't be found, since FW 9 was released as stable.

Mark

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[Beth-docs Bryson]

On Oct 5, 2020, at 2:44 PM, Mark S <mar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey Mark,

>  I had made a lot of edits on version 9 which are now outdated with respect to our project stored in version 8. Thus, if we were to upgrade and these versions merged it would make us lose a lot of progress.

Did you do Send/Receive after you made these edits (that you no longer want to keep)?

If you did, then you would need to ask someone who has admin power on LanguageDepot to prune that branch of the source control tree.  Otherwise, they will get merged in at some point in the future, when the whole team does upgrade to FW 9.  (Well, they might or might not, depending on how the merge is done.)  

If you didn’t do Send/Receive after you made the edits, then all you have to do is delete your version of the project (well, hopefully make a backup first, and if you need to restore that backup to compare, then restore it to a DIFFERENT NAME, thus forking the project just for reference).  It sounds like you want those edits to be lost, and that would be a way to achieve that.

And pay attention to all that Mark said about where FW stores projects.  I have found that with FW 9, I may tell it one place to store the projects, but where it actually stores them may in fact be one directory higher, or somehow slightly different than what I thought I told it.  So definitely pay attention.

And it is in general wise to have a way of distinguishing “backups made with FW8” vs “backups made with FW9”.  

For myself, in my Backups folder, I have folders for different version of FLEx (a new one each time the data model changes).  So I would have:  FW 8.2, FW 8.3, FW 9.0.  When I have FW 8.3 running, I back up to FW 8.3.  Then when I upgrade to FW 9.0, I change my default location for backups, so they all go into the FW 9.0 folder inside Backups.   

For me this is important as a consultant, because I have a lot of other people’s projects on my computer.  For an ordinary user it is less crucial, but at a time like this, if you think you may need to revert to FW 8.3 at some point, it is really helpful if you can tell the difference between “backups made with FW 8.3” and “backups made with FW 9.0”.

-Beth

[Beth-docs Bryson]

Mark,

On Oct 5, 2020, at 2:44 PM, Mark S <mar...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Being the only linux user on my team, I don't want to make the rest have to upgrade to accomodate me. Are you able to send me the install files for version 8? I

Yes! Our conversation before prompted me to preserve the FW 8.3 packages before they got overwritten. I just made a note to post those for you, hopefully this week.

I hope you will post on the FLEx-on-Linux list once you have instructions for accessing those preserved packages.  There are a number of people asking about it.  It is a non-standard procedure, but it sounds like it’s a really good thing that you preserved those packages!

-Beth