ezboot 1.0.17

Automatically configure a Boot2Gecko Device. It's so ez!

Automatically configure a Boot2Gecko Device. It’s so ez!

This is a command line script for the convenience of developing on B2G such that you need to flash new builds to your device periodically and begin hacking ASAP.

Features:

• Automatically downloads the latest build and flashes it

• Configures WiFi on your device

• Pre-installs apps that you commonly need

• Puts custom prefs on your device

• Easy, intuitive command line

• You can use a config file for everything

• Frictionless convention over configuration

Do you really need this? Probably not! You should try the Firefox OS Simulator first. There are some device interaction features coming very soon to the simulator (such as Push To Device) that will hopefully make this script obsolete.

Requirements:

• Mac or Linux.

  • On Mac you might need to install XCode with Command Line Tools from https://developer.apple.com/downloads/

  • Windows could be supported but prepare to send patches.

• You must use a build of B2G that has Marionette enabled. More details below.

• Python 2.7 or greater (Python 3 isn’t suported yet)

• The pip command to install Python packages

  • The best way to set up Python and pip on Mac is to use homebrew. Once homebrew is installed type brew install python. This will give you the pip command.

• adb needs to be on your $PATH. Get it from the Android SDK.

• Some additional Python modules will be installed as dependencies

Caveats:

• You should not enable the Remote Debugging setting on B2G when Marionette is enabled. This will create conflicting debugger listeners. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=764913 for info.

Contents:

• Install

  • Source

  • Marionette

  • First Timers

• Usage

  • Config file

• Commands

  • flash

  • setup

  • dl

  • http

  • login

  • kill

  • recss

• Why?

Install

With pip, run this:

pip install ezboot

This pulls in some dependencies so you may want to use a common virtualenv and adjust your $PATH so you can use ezboot for any project, e.g. /path/to/.virtualenvs/ezboot/bin.

To install from source:

git clone git://github.com/kumar303/ezboot.git
cd ezboot
python setup.py develop

Source

The source is available at https://github.com/kumar303/ezboot/

Marionette

For this script to work you must flash your device with a B2G build that has Marionette enabled. The flash command will do that for you. Read this if you want to build various flavors of B2G with Marionette support yourself.

First Timers

You’ll try anything at least once, right? The very first time you run ezboot flash you probably need to enable Remote Debugging first by digging into Settings > Device Information > More Information > Developer. Otherwise, adb won’t be able to connect. This only applies if you had flashed with a B2G build that did not have Marionette enabled. If you’ve never installed B2G at all then you need to enable debugger connections on Android.

Usage

Run this for a quick reference:

ezboot --help

Config file

You can set defaults for all argument values by creating an ezboot.ini file in the working directory. Make a section for each sub command with long argument names as keys. For example:

[setup]
wifi_ssid = mywifi
wifi_key = WPA-PSK
wifi_pass = my secure password with spaces
apps = https://marketplace-dev.allizom.org/manifest.webapp
       https://marketplace.allizom.org/manifest.webapp

[flash]
flash_user = ...
flash_pass = ...

Commands

flash

This downloads a build and flashes it to your device. Here is a full reference:

ezboot flash --help

The defaults will probably work for you. If you don’t want to be prompted for your username/password each time, you can save them in an ezboot.ini config file:

[flash]
flash_user = the_user
flash_pass = secret$password

Captain Obvious says don’t commit your password to a public repo.

setup

This sets up your flashed device for usage. Here is the full reference:

ezboot setup --help

It can do the following:

• configure WiFi

• pre-install some apps

• put custom prefs on the device

The --apps argument takes multiple values. In a config file, add them one per line in an ezboot.ini config file like this:

[setup]
apps = https://marketplace-dev.allizom.org/manifest.webapp
       https://marketplace.allizom.org/manifest.webapp
wifi_ssid = ...
wifi_key = WPA-PSK
wifi_pass = ...

By convention, if you put a custom prefs file in ./ezboot/custom-prefs.js where dot is the working directory then it will be pushed to /data/local/user.js on the device. Any existing custom prefs are not preserved.

dl

This downloads a build and saves the Zip file to a custom directory. The build will not be flashed to a device and any subsequent reflash command will not attempt to use it. This is just a convenient way to grab a build without logging in; the same user/pass options from flash apply here.

Here is a full reference:

ezboot dl --help

You can set a custom location with ezboot dl --location=.... By default it will save builds to ~/Downloads.

http

This restarts your phone with HTTP logging temporarily enabled. Here is the full reference:

ezboot http --help

This runs B2G on the device until you interrupt it (^C). After you’re finished the console will tell you where to find a log of all HTTP requests/responses. When you view the file it might warn you that it has binary content but that’s typically just at the beginning of the file. Keep paging.

login

Make sure a Persona screen is open on the device then type ezboot login. Here is a reference:

ezboot login --help

This lets you type the username / password to a new Persona account from your nice desktop keyboard instead of the device keypad. In a real world situation this wouldn’t be as annoying since Persona remembers who you are but for development you’ll be typing new accounts all the time for testing.

kill

This kills all running apps which may be useful when you need to reload styles, js or other assets.

ezboot kill --help

The recss command might be faster.

recss

This reloads all stylesheets on the current frame. More info:

ezboot recss --help

Why?

While automated functional tests are fantastic I also want to make sure developers are testing their changes manually on real devices with the latest builds. It’s a pain to maintain a development device yourself so this created an itch that had to be scratched. There is plenty of prior art on B2G scripts but each had different goals or they were done with cryptic bash magic.