Provider Portal/Apps

After all that reading, you want to get your App into App Center? Great!

Provider Portal: Apps

Univention App Center Provider Portal has a module "Apps" where you can upload your App into the Test App Center. This is something like a beta channel where you can test your App before users can see it and install it in their production environments.

To get an account, just send an e-mail to <appcenter@univention.de> and tell us your name, e-mail, organization. We will create an account for you. Your account's password is chosen by you. Just go to [1]. After that, you can log in to: [2].

All your Apps across all UCS versions are listed in the module. You can also create a new App. Left clicking on an App will let you edit all options concerning your App, including logos, packages. Attributes of the ini file are put into a clear form. Right clicking will open a context menu with further options like editing an older version or adding a new version.

Adding a first App to the Apps module

Note

In fact, not across all UCS versions. This module only supports UCS 4.1 and higher; Apps for older releases are not managed.

Actions on the top right of an App item in the Gallery. Hover effect shows version information

After editing the App version, you can save your changes directly on the Test App Center. This is done without any interaction from Univention. You may install and test your App immediately.

To actually install the App from the Test App Center, you need a running UCS (see Testing). You also need to activate the Test App Center and deactivate some security features (packages from the Test App Center are not signed by Univention!). Use

univention-install univention-appcenter-dev;
univention-app dev-use-test-appcenter

for this.

Note

If you feel the module is not powerful enough, you can send feedback to appcenter@univention.de.

Controlling the Apps module from the command line

The module can be used by calling a script. This is great for integrating Univention App Center Provider Portal into your build chain.

One advantage of using the module is that it gives you easy access to the App as it would look like in the App Center. As good presentation is key to the success of an App, you should still use the module from time to time.

Actions for App management on the top, including version change, mailing Univention. The center contains the ini file abstraction

Prerequisites

You need to download the latest version of the upload script here: https://provider-portal.software-univention.de/appcenter-selfservice/univention-appcenter-control

The script needs:

• Python 2.7 (https://www.python.org/downloads/)
• cURL (https://curl.haxx.se/download.html)

The script can then be used to control the Apps module. On Linux, type:

curl https://provider-portal.software-univention.de/appcenter-selfservice/univention-appcenter-control \
 > ~/univention-appcenter-control
chmod +x ~/univention-appcenter-control
~/univention-appcenter-control --help
~/univention-appcenter-control list

Commands

The script has several subcommands. Some actions are only supported in the web module (e.g., creating a completely new App, deleting one App version).

list

Lists all Apps.

status

Fetches the current status of an App. It lists all versions along with the information whether the App is in the App Center.

new-version

Add a new version for an existing App. Initially, the new version is an exact copy of the old App version (same ini file with reference to the same logos, same packages - well, except for Version in the ini file). You may edit the version afterwards. Either by the web module, or by the upload command. You can specify the "source app version" as well as the new version: ./univention-appcenter-control new-version 4.1/myapp=1.0 4.1/myapp=2.0. If you do not specify a second argument, the version will be set to that of the source version plus an additional "ucs-1" qualifier.

upload

Uploads files to the Apps module. These files replace the old files. You can upload ini files, logos, READMEs, packages and other files. The filenames have to match the filename on the App Center server, e.g., a README_UPDATE_DE file has to be named README_UPDATE_DE, an ini file needs to be named like myapp.ini. Logos, thumbnails have to be named after a filename specified in the ini file. For packages, any other package version than the one you just uploaded is deleted. This keeps the repository cleam, you can add --dont-clear to avoid this. You may also upload an archive. In this case, it needs to end with .tgz or .tar.gz. Technically, every file is extracted and used separately, so you could also just upload every single file instead of the archive.

Warning

Uploading an ini file is discouraged. If Univention changed something on your ini file (new attributes introduced some time ago or typos), these changes are overwritten. Normally you do not need to change anything in your ini file other than the version. And the version is changed automatically by new-version.

Credentials

All subcommands take additionally --username and --passwdfile (a file containing nothing but the password, not even the a newline). This can be used for noninteractive scripts. However, it is even possible to create two files, ~/.univention-appcenter-user and ~/.univention-appcenter-pwd. These container nothing but the username / password. And they are used so that you do not have to type your credentials every time you use the script.

Examples

# creates a new version based on the latest version of myapp
~/univention-appcenter-control new-version 4.1/myapp

# creates version 2.0 of myapp based on the (formerly) latest version
~/univention-appcenter-control new-version 4.1/myapp 4.1/myapp=2.0

# copies myapp Version 1.0 from UCS 4.1 to UCS 4.2. Note: Currently, only 4.2 is not supported.
~/univention-appcenter-control new-version 4.1/myapp=1.0 4.2/myapp=1.0

# uploads all README files in the current folder to the latest version 
# myapp in UCS 4.1
~/univention-appcenter-control upload 4.1/myapp README*

# uploads myapp-server.deb. Any other myapp-server package will be deleted
~/univention-appcenter-control upload 4.1/myapp myapp-server.deb

# uploads an image. Will be rejected if this image is not specified somewhere 
# in the ini file. Warning (/ Feature): This may overwrite the logo for other
# version using the same logo name, too.
~/univention-appcenter-control upload 4.1/myapp=1.0 myapp.svg 

# uploads an archive. All files in this archive will be used. The folder 
# structure does not matter.
~/univention-appcenter-control upload 4.1/myapp app.tar.gz