[00:00.000 --> 00:11.780]  There was a lot of talk about like geeks used in scientific environment for doing like
[00:11.780 --> 00:19.720]  reproductive research, like in geeks conference, geeks birthdays and even here before my talk.
[00:19.720 --> 00:25.280]  So this will be a completely different usage of geeks.
[00:25.280 --> 00:30.680]  So I will present first what is replicant, so fully free Android distribution and how
[00:30.680 --> 00:37.040]  we manage to use geeks or fail to use it basically.
[00:37.040 --> 00:45.120]  So yes, there is a lot of issue in smartphones.
[00:45.120 --> 00:51.360]  So for instance like people still have to use them to be reachable, to do mobile computing
[00:51.360 --> 00:55.760]  like in some country, mobile banking and so on.
[00:55.760 --> 00:58.800]  And it's also like often cheaper than laptops.
[00:58.800 --> 01:01.200]  So a lot of people use them.
[01:01.200 --> 01:08.480]  But yeah, the issue is that like it's to produce the smartphone like you have to mine metals
[01:08.480 --> 01:09.480]  and so on.
[01:09.480 --> 01:11.880]  So it's not good for the planet.
[01:11.880 --> 01:16.560]  The networks also know your location like it spies on you, the smartphones run on free
[01:16.560 --> 01:17.800]  software.
[01:17.800 --> 01:22.560]  So it's even not clear if like smartphone can really empower people because you can take
[01:22.560 --> 01:29.680]  pictures and things like that so you can get proof of stuff, but you also get spying.
[01:29.680 --> 01:38.360]  So not using smartphone is not really a solution because a lot of people use it so political
[01:38.360 --> 01:44.320]  activists, journalists and so on, even indigenous people for their security.
[01:44.320 --> 01:53.600]  So yeah, like destroying smartphone and factory is not a good option and it requires like people
[01:53.600 --> 01:57.200]  to have people willing to do that and to support them.
[01:57.200 --> 02:02.400]  So the option to fix all that stuff would be like free software so we can make for instance
[02:02.400 --> 02:09.240]  smartphone last longer and block some of the spying but not the fact that the network
[02:09.240 --> 02:10.800]  know your location and so on.
[02:10.800 --> 02:17.480]  So we can limit basically some of the risk and also other way to help than programming
[02:17.480 --> 02:23.880]  like doing political pressure and funding like doing work to get funds to fund people
[02:23.880 --> 02:25.880]  to do stuff.
[02:25.880 --> 02:32.440]  So we want 100% free software and to be usable and like I said limit the damage.
[02:32.440 --> 02:41.480]  So historically we like worked to fork line address and make sure we don't ship any non
[02:41.480 --> 02:45.240]  free software.
[02:45.240 --> 02:53.880]  So the idea is like to have 100% free software, Android distribution.
[02:53.880 --> 02:59.800]  So yeah, like Geeks basically.
[02:59.800 --> 03:04.160]  So this is a smartphone, you have a modem here.
[03:04.160 --> 03:10.680]  So this communicates with the tower and also like as access to your SIM card and it's connected
[03:10.680 --> 03:17.760]  also to main system on a chip on this one.
[03:17.760 --> 03:23.080]  So the issue is like you have a very high DPI on smartphone like the screen is very
[03:23.080 --> 03:27.040]  small with high resolution.
[03:27.040 --> 03:34.280]  So you cannot also use it with very big fingers and usually you have no hardware keyboards.
[03:34.280 --> 03:41.160]  So this is also why we are trying to use Android on smartphone because it's already works.
[03:41.160 --> 03:43.720]  So yeah.
[03:43.720 --> 03:50.960]  So you have like for instance several hardware you can choose from, for instance this could
[03:50.960 --> 03:54.400]  run with Geeks for instance.
[03:54.400 --> 04:00.520]  The pine phone, so you have like really the status you have nothing ideal yet.
[04:00.520 --> 04:09.760]  Yeah, the lot of phone like don't boot with free software in other like the modem, yeah
[04:09.760 --> 04:14.800]  it's isolated from the system on a chip so it can't access its RAM like take control
[04:14.800 --> 04:19.200]  of the operating system and so on.
[04:19.200 --> 04:26.960]  And like hardware usability on GNULINUX, it really depends.
[04:26.960 --> 04:31.520]  Like power consumption for instance on the LibreM5 is probably good enough and the pine
[04:31.520 --> 04:36.120]  phone it's like not there yet but it could be improved.
[04:36.120 --> 04:39.720]  So yeah.
[04:39.720 --> 04:46.400]  So we have like some fully free distribution like PureOS it works right now, it supports
[04:46.400 --> 04:55.000]  one device, replicant 6 it's really old it's still based on Android 6 so it has a security
[04:55.000 --> 04:56.000]  issue.
[04:56.000 --> 05:05.880]  Geeks it could probably work but it's like missing a lot of package probably.
[05:05.880 --> 05:12.560]  We need like probably to have like GNOME working on smartphone and so on to be able to use
[05:12.560 --> 05:20.400]  it and other fully free distribution they also like lack packages but you also need
[05:20.400 --> 05:27.000]  like for instance package to support the modem and integrate all that in the distribution
[05:27.000 --> 05:34.040]  so for instance for the pine phone it's as I understand there was a talk at FOSDEM last
[05:34.040 --> 05:40.840]  year and it's doable to package it in distribution relatively easily.
[05:40.840 --> 05:46.680]  So as I said replicant is like fully free software Android distribution, supports some
[05:46.680 --> 05:54.560]  old device and we are trying to like get it working on Android 11 still.
[05:54.560 --> 06:00.800]  So yeah I probably already explained why it's based on Android.
[06:00.800 --> 06:08.160]  So Android is like far from ideal because we don't lack any package manager during builds.
[06:08.160 --> 06:15.840]  So for instance distribution like Geeks you have an abstraction that can compile for instance
[06:15.840 --> 06:20.960]  software written with auto tools that can build with auto tools, CMake and so on.
[06:20.960 --> 06:27.640]  Android you have everything that's downloaded and put in the same tree so this is a big
[06:27.640 --> 06:33.440]  issue because we can't easily mix GNU linux with Android because Android you have everything
[06:33.440 --> 06:39.280]  like you have Android.mk or Android.bp it's their build system and everything is integrated
[06:39.280 --> 06:46.440]  together so you don't have this abstraction and also the code like it's less fun to work
[06:46.440 --> 06:52.520]  with with Android and like you have huge code that's not really known or very well known
[06:52.520 --> 06:59.000]  or detected from the free software community and we also have like issue with application
[06:59.000 --> 07:05.680]  for instance fdroid it's really great it has like strict licensing policy but it requires
[07:05.680 --> 07:11.120]  the non free Android SDK in practice to build applications.
[07:11.120 --> 07:17.520]  So that's maybe something that Geeks could solve one day.
[07:17.520 --> 07:26.600]  So the Android architecture it's it's meant really for getting like selling phones so basically
[07:26.600 --> 07:32.240]  at the beginning you had a modified linux kernel for instance you could have like completely
[07:32.240 --> 07:39.320]  different audio driver and it talks to a hardware library that makes the abstraction between
[07:39.320 --> 07:45.040]  the kernel and the Android frameworks so Android application talks to the Android framework
[07:45.040 --> 07:48.200]  and can play audio for instance.
[07:48.200 --> 07:54.880]  So still today there's a lot of fun that are not like supported by upstream linux so there
[07:54.880 --> 08:06.880]  is still like need of it still work like that and the situation is still not that good.
[08:06.880 --> 08:13.520]  So the security model also is Android sandbox application and linux it's much more like
[08:13.520 --> 08:21.520]  simple for users because in Android you often like have malware in Google Play that's removed
[08:21.520 --> 08:27.960]  by Google obviously but it's meant like not to trust the software while in GNU linux it
[08:27.960 --> 08:35.480]  trusts basically the software so it's much more easy you have root and so on.
[08:35.480 --> 08:45.280]  So yeah maybe I will skip that yeah no maybe not so basically in replicants we try to replace
[08:45.280 --> 08:51.400]  non-free code and now we are trying like to support device with upstream kernel but yeah
[08:51.400 --> 08:55.480]  it takes some time basically.
[08:55.480 --> 09:03.560]  So now I will get to the geeks specific stuff finally when I got all the background done
[09:03.560 --> 09:07.480]  can we run geeks on top of replicants.
[09:07.480 --> 09:12.680]  So replicants 6 is a very old distribution so I tried and it doesn't work we can use
[09:12.680 --> 09:20.040]  for instance Geekpack trying to like deploy binaries but you need a matching kernel with
[09:20.040 --> 09:28.880]  kernel headers so when you build it the application run and for instance changing the kernel header
[09:28.880 --> 09:36.880]  in geeks besides requiring to recompile everything I tried and it didn't work for me but we can
[09:36.880 --> 09:43.880]  run it on like recent Android versions so we simply use Geekspack and we can deploy like
[09:43.880 --> 09:50.760]  command line application to Android so it's really easy it's just cross compile the application
[09:50.760 --> 09:56.440]  so you still have like a lot of limitation with cross compiling because some build system
[09:56.440 --> 10:02.520]  don't support cross compiling for instance you can't like you can't run GNOME apps but
[10:02.520 --> 10:09.360]  you cannot even compile them because it will use like build system that are not supported
[10:09.360 --> 10:15.240]  for cross compiling and this is also useful if we want to support like smartphone in geeks
[10:15.240 --> 10:22.960]  because if we manage to cross compile software we could build image that are then can be downloaded
[10:22.960 --> 10:31.040]  from geeks website like for the pine 64 no pine book everything is cross compiled because
[10:31.080 --> 10:42.400]  the builder run on x86 machines so yeah and we would like in replicant to like support
[10:42.400 --> 10:51.480]  using geeks but it's really too big to ship so instead we will try to implement the missing
[10:51.480 --> 10:58.400]  dependency and maybe add an installer based on geeks install this is the standard way to
[10:58.400 --> 11:07.120]  install geeks on existing distribution so this doesn't work basically we cannot do like
[11:07.120 --> 11:13.920]  Android package yet in geeks so the issue is we would need like a real Android indicate to do
[11:13.920 --> 11:22.440]  that because Android use a different Lipsy that's bionic so maybe if like people want to do it
[11:22.440 --> 11:32.520]  new like target like for cross compilation would need to be added but this is probably a lot of
[11:32.520 --> 11:41.480]  work but yeah the issue is also in in Android application and maybe in lot of modern programming
[11:41.480 --> 11:48.520]  language when you install something like with pip install it will install a lot of dependency
[11:48.520 --> 11:58.040]  and basically you don't really know what's in there for instance for for like JavaScript it's
[11:58.040 --> 12:06.840]  npm you can have a lot of dependency and you you really lose control so if geeks would be able
[12:06.840 --> 12:14.760]  to like build Android application it would be a way to fix the SDK issue the fdroid is having and
[12:14.760 --> 12:22.600]  also like really know what's inside the application and control it then there is the issue of can we
[12:22.600 --> 12:34.680]  build an Android distribution with geeks so as I said there's a Lipsy difference so the issue is that
[12:35.400 --> 12:41.160]  yeah I sorry I already explained that the Android build system it's you don't have like package
[12:41.160 --> 12:48.760]  definition in it so this has issue of licensing and no abstraction for the build system like auto
[12:48.760 --> 12:57.400]  tools cmax and so on so Android usually like requires huge resources to build because again
[12:57.400 --> 13:03.160]  you don't have like package manager so you have to build everything at once as far as I know
[13:03.160 --> 13:12.680]  and so can we like if we package for instance all Android in geeks there has been work that
[13:12.680 --> 13:25.080]  has started to do that you hit some issue for instance the the Android build system geeks
[13:25.080 --> 13:32.520]  supports android.mk so it's it supports the old Android build system so this is why it's probably
[13:32.600 --> 13:43.640]  limited to Android 7 and the newer android.bp with blueprints need to be supported to like be able
[13:43.640 --> 13:51.400]  to build Android components and also it would be tied to glipsy I don't know if it would work but yeah
[13:52.360 --> 14:02.120]  maybe it works so but yeah the advantage also it would be easier to build since you could
[14:02.120 --> 14:07.720]  just use geeks on an existing distribution again you would know like the licensing on the package
[14:07.720 --> 14:14.600]  how it's done you wouldn't have this build problem of building everything you could just build a part
[14:14.600 --> 14:22.920]  of it so it would fix a lot of issue but the the issue is that if for instance replicant does that
[14:22.920 --> 14:29.560]  we would be tied to geeks and there is also there is the real risk of like not be being stuck at
[14:29.560 --> 14:35.160]  some point because geeks is it's it's really nice it's strict for like programming language
[14:35.800 --> 14:43.320]  and so on it tries to bootstrap things like even make you use a shell script to like bootstrap make
[14:43.320 --> 14:49.160]  you cannot use make to bootstrap make sometimes there are exceptions like for haskell where geeks
[14:49.160 --> 14:55.960]  use a binary compiler to bootstrap the compiler but usually it's done well so it it takes time
[14:55.960 --> 15:02.680]  basically to like add newer android build system and julien lepellier did did a talk about that
[15:02.680 --> 15:11.320]  explaining all all the effort required required for that so yeah it's it would be a big bet and
[15:11.320 --> 15:19.880]  it would be risky so use for instance using geeks inside the android build system for like I don't
[15:20.120 --> 15:27.080]  know building the kernel or and putting the binary inside maybe it would be a better solution for that
[15:27.080 --> 15:37.880]  or even like trying to use like geeks shell for instance to make like to install a required
[15:37.880 --> 15:46.200]  package to make a container of it it's really really simple you do geekshell.c-f because you
[15:46.200 --> 15:54.760]  can now have fhs option you have like a standard distribution with user bin etc you don't have
[15:54.760 --> 16:03.000]  everything in slash GNU anymore or at least that's how the tools see it and so you that's how for
[16:03.000 --> 16:11.560]  instance bitcoin can be built inside bitcoin core you have a way to build a reproducible binary and
[16:11.560 --> 16:18.520]  it use geeks in the background not with fhs yet but it was done before but that's how it works basically
[16:19.320 --> 16:27.240]  so you can use it to build stuff but and android it's also isolated from the host when building
[16:27.240 --> 16:33.720]  stuff so it doesn't it tries to avoid using like python from the host and so on so it could probably
[16:33.720 --> 16:48.440]  work so this is like how where we yeah so we we still have like some real use case of geeks
[16:48.440 --> 16:55.880]  and we will go into it for instance like we use all distribution to build android because android
[16:55.880 --> 17:01.720]  the android version we use require that so like using geeks to ship some more recent tools
[17:02.520 --> 17:09.800]  that are required works basically and one of the big use cases so it's also automatic testing
[17:09.800 --> 17:16.920]  because a lot of projects use things like docker and again you don't know what's in the container
[17:16.920 --> 17:23.640]  it's like you give control to docker hub you you don't like host your own infrastructure and so on
[17:23.640 --> 17:31.960]  and with geeks it's much more easy to like do it without like depending on infrastructure like that
[17:32.760 --> 17:41.640]  so basically we have a modem and we have a library that talks to modem drivers it's a bit like i don't
[17:41.960 --> 17:52.280]  know qmi and things like that so this is specific for samsung phones so we can use geeks.scm
[17:53.480 --> 17:55.240]  to test that automatically
[17:55.400 --> 18:12.120]  so this is in some software mainly guile software and geeks obviously
[18:13.320 --> 18:20.440]  you have some people writing files like that where you have a package sorry wrong file
[18:25.960 --> 18:29.480]  uh yes you have you have package definition
[18:33.240 --> 18:34.440]  like that for instance
[18:36.840 --> 18:42.920]  sorry yes here so people use package definition to be able to automatically
[18:43.960 --> 18:48.040]  ah five minutes sorry to automatically test software
[18:48.760 --> 18:58.760]  um so we use that to like test this library when built with gnu linux with gcc
[18:59.800 --> 19:10.920]  silang and silang and also with the android build system uh so uh basically sorry so in the
[19:10.920 --> 19:25.720]  android build system you have uh like sorry uh yes you have like targets like that so this is to
[19:25.720 --> 19:36.920]  to build a tool so there is the the source code here and you have um sorry uh yes it's that one
[19:36.920 --> 19:42.920]  so geeks has an android build system which is a project that's just a mac file that includes the
[19:42.920 --> 19:49.720]  android specific mac file that can then build targets so it's it's pretty limited because
[19:50.680 --> 19:58.200]  it's really nice because it's simple but because it's mac file based uh here it includes the android
[19:58.280 --> 20:08.040]  the specific file to build software but you can have only one target so what we can do is in geeks.sm
[20:08.040 --> 20:16.680]  we parse the file and we uh basically we compile it for all targets and we can even like run val
[20:16.680 --> 20:27.400]  green and a lot of stuff inside uh so yeah uh how many how many minutes three questions okay uh
[20:28.840 --> 20:36.600]  sorry so we also use geeks for some of uh infrastructure so basically i did this talk because
[20:37.800 --> 20:45.960]  like there is a lot of presentation on geeks for like scientific software but less on other use case
[20:46.520 --> 20:47.640]  so do you have questions
[20:51.080 --> 20:58.200]  yeah uh what did you uh what triggered you to use geeks for uh
[20:58.200 --> 21:08.360]  a replicant building uh basically uh it's to like have a complete uh test treat uh that's uh
[21:09.320 --> 21:14.120]  without much complexity oh can you repeat the question sorry
[21:16.840 --> 21:24.040]  what triggered you to use geeks uh for uh to use geeks for building
[21:25.640 --> 21:34.280]  for yeah for doing tests it's fine uh so if i wanted to do test i can't do all the tests
[21:35.080 --> 21:41.000]  for instance with the various leapsy build system uh usually in autotools you have like
[21:42.040 --> 21:47.400]  you can run scripts but you can't rebuild the stuff with other dependencies so it's really not
[21:47.400 --> 21:53.400]  supported so the flexibility here it's like really huge you can test almost everything
[21:53.400 --> 21:59.720]  and you even like have uh power pc support so you can test for big and yand too so it's uh yeah
[21:59.800 --> 22:00.440]  other question
[22:11.960 --> 22:19.640]  replicants uh so what is the future of replicants so i'm trying to get funding through an lnet
[22:19.640 --> 22:25.880]  again to support the pine fun in replicants and make glow droid squad reusable easily by other
[22:25.880 --> 22:33.720]  distribution and also uh part usb began to the pine fun to to android basically to isolate the
[22:33.720 --> 22:39.480]  modem because the modem could like try to become a keyboard it's really easy to do with a usb uh
[22:39.480 --> 22:46.440]  gadget and then like start typing commands so we really want to isolate the modem uh is there
[22:47.160 --> 22:55.640]  other question or yes are you investigating using nix instead of wix ah so we are fully
[22:56.360 --> 23:04.600]  can you repeat the question uh sorry um have you considered using nix instead of gix uh no
[23:06.680 --> 23:14.600]  because nix is not uh validated by the dfsf and we are so we need to use like stuff that's fully
[23:14.600 --> 23:20.680]  free and so we would need like to maybe fork nix and it's a lot of work
[23:25.640 --> 23:27.100]  you