Announcing new installer for Storeman

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#17

Thanks @mentaljam - running the installer worked correctly, Storeman now installed and running nicely on Xperia 10 ii ~ SFOS 4.2.0.19 EA

#18

Hello,

I’m a newcomer to Sailfish, and I have no idea how to “install the installer”.

Why is it not in the Jolla Store? Does Jolla charge for that?

#19

Jolla Store has several strict limitations about the apps it accepts, therefore many (most) apps are only available on the 3-rd party Openrepos software repository. Storeman is a client for Openrepos (although you could access Openrepos via web browser, download apk packages and install them, Storeman makes things easier adding a Store-like interface). This is not a Jolla project and Jolla, of course, does not charge anything for it.

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#20

The charge question was about inclusion in the the official store, not the Storeman (Installer) itself. Ok, so there are some other reasons (for the absence of Storeman Installer in the official store).

Now how do I install it?

#21

Hi,

To install the installer you need to:

  • enable installation of untrusted software in settings app (sorry, I don’t know the exact name of the entry in English),
  • download the installer RPM from OpenRepos,
  • open the downloaded RPM and accept the installation.

Then you can disable the untrusted software again.

@jameson gave a good answer about presence of Storeman and its installer in the official store. In short, they are not allowed due to use of restricted APIs.

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#22

Awesome!

The setting is System → Security → Untrusted software.

I launched the phone’s web browser, typed in “https://openrepos.net” (typing anything on a touchscreen makes me barf in my mouth so I didn’t type the whole URL-Path to the Installer), located the search form (with the help of a desktop browser, lol), fumbled through to the package page, tapped the noarch.rpm link, and it was smooth sailing from there.

For others: just follow the link in @mentaljam’s comment and tap the noarch.rpm link, it’s quite a ways down the page below the blurb and screenshots.

Now the question is: what did I miss, and can you make it harder to miss? I was clearly supposed to know the bit about untrusted software, and I was supposed to know that the default browser has a handler for rpm files. Before your help I feared that I had to use the terminal and add the repo with zypper… I have no problems using a shell, but typing on the touchscreen makes me want to jump from a window…

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#23

About OpenRepos | OpenRepos.net — Community Repository System still links to https://openrepos.net/content/osetr/storeman .

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#24

Fixed, thank you for pointing!

#25

Do you think Storeman Installer | OpenRepos.net — Community Repository System is the wrong place to mention the setting or even briefly describe the install process so newbies like myself don’t have to search the web for hints? Something like this would have given me all the answers I was looking for and this whole subthread would not exist:

To install Storeman Installer, enable “System → Security → Untrusted software” in the phone settings, visit this page using the phone’s browser, and tap the harbour-storeman-installer-$version.jolla_.noarch.rpm link further down the page.

I get it, I’m the first one to complain so what’s the issue, right? :slight_smile: Could it be that I’m the first isolated newcomer in a long time, and all other installs are done by longtime users? I mean, Sailfish is not exactly a mainstream phone OS, I wouldn’t be surprised if 97+% of its users used it since Jolla 1 or earlier and the rest were their spouses, kids, and converted colleagues.

To add a bit more light from another angle: I do have some GNU/Linux knowledge; I wrote extensive tooling around zypper while I worked in SUSE and it still didn’t occur to me that the browser would default to installing the downloaded rpm. As I hinted earlier, I expected the installer to be in the official store, and when that turned out to be false and there was no info and the page includes run “devel-su pkcon refresh” in the terminal app, it seemed I was expected to type zypper ar https://repo.sailfishos.org/obs/home:/mentaljam/4.2.0.19_armv7hl/home:mentaljam.repo into the phone and that’s clearly ridiculous… Another reason I didn’t expect the rpm link to be the install procedure is that the OpenRepos webui I get on my XA2 with Sailfish 4.2 is clearly not meant for phones.

Long story short: it is not obvious (to everyone) and the fix is a short sentence, please add the blockquote above the the Storeman Install page, ok? :slight_smile:

Anyway, thanks for the software, and your attitude. When I was researching what to install the contrast in approaches to users between the LineageOS XA2 port maintainer in XDA forums and your writing here and elsewhere drove me to Sailfish. They owe you a chunk of that 50EUR. :smiley:

#26

OMG, “the computer” treats links to OpenRepos as spam and hides messages that include them. :frowning:

1 Like
#27

You are definitely right! I’m so used to using Sailfish that I didn’t think about newbies. I’ve added a section about installation process to OpenRepos. Thanks again for pointing such obvious things :slight_smile:

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#28

Am I the only one with slow (it needs several minutes) opening Storeman when using the icon in the app grid? It happens on every try, not just the first after installation or reboot. If I execute the harbour-storeman in the terminal, it opens immediately. I can’t find something problematic in the /usr/share/applications/harbour-storeman.desktop file. The installation went smoothly and Storeman works fast after the opening process.

And one more. Looks like it can’t remember my login at OpenRepos even if I choose the save password option.

Removing and installing Storeman again doesn’t help.

#29

I think someone has already complained about this. I have no idea about the reason…

It’s a known issue

#30

Why Storeman or its installer is not available from F-Droid or APToide or UpToDown markets? For F-Droid would be enough adding a repo url.

#31

I would guess because they are meant for apps for Android platform. As it states on F-Droid website:

I do agree it would be fantastic, if the installation process was as simple as installing apps from an app store.

1 Like
#32

Why should i use an Android App to install a SFOS application?

#33

I’m sorry if I was being unclear. What I tried to express there was that it would be nice to use an app store (let’s say Jolla store or Chum) to install Storeman. I do understand why this is not possible at this point.

#34

Storeman Installer available from Chum would really be fine, and I don’t understand where’s the difficulty here.
@robang74 Storeman is not available on F-Droid or Aptoide, because Storeman is a native SFOS app, therefore technically not possible on platforms for Android system.

#35

Thanks for your clarification. Now, I fully got the meaning of the reply that @tuplasuhveli wrote and the counter question of @miau.

Therefore, I need to reformulate my initial question.

Why StoreMan, Chum and PatchManager are not listed in Jolla Market, at least after having bought the full license?

The same question should be extended to Micro-G suite.

I found the manual for installing Micro-G and sincerly, it is a bit long for something which is quite a basic requirement for almost the people want to use a licensed Android compatible smartphone.

A view above tehcnical stuff

It is ok that Sailfish OS would be a smartphone for hackers, but there is no reason that it would limited to hackers only, as long as Jolla prefers to sell devices instead of licenses.

The unit operative margin for every device can be higher than the unit operative margin for every license (I do not know) but the licensing market it easier and faster to expand and thus can be much more renumerative.

  • Why we should care about Jolla earnings? The day Jolla will go out of the market, our hacking here will probably reach a sad end.

  • Why we should care about Sailfish OS smooth adoption curve? Larger is the user base, more probably some people here got recruited for supporting that large user base.

Even, if you do not care about these two points, there is no reason to waste hackers time in something should be smoothly addressed by a decision. In fact, the day you would reinstall the SFOS on your own smartphone, the same tricky adventure will be repeated, necessarly.

#36

The full (paid) licence is for the Android support and a few other things. (edit: word suggestions)

Storeman, Chum and Patch Manager is a completely different thing and has nothing to do with the paid SailfishOS licence. A free license also includes Storeman, Chum and Patch Manager, because this is an initiative of engaged coders and not Jolla stuff (in legal terms). It’s free and easy to install Storeman and Chum additional. See this like additionally installing F-Droid and Aptoide additional to Google/Android store on an Android phone.