Future of the FlexBE Chrome App

[pschillinger]

As some of you might know, Google turns down its support for Chrome Apps in early 2018. This also affects the FlexBE Chrome App.

First and most importantly: There will be an alternative soon enough. Most likely, I will be able to publish a first version already this month and would be happy to get feedback on how it works for you. The new version will be based on the NW.js framework, which supports execution of former Chrome Apps out of the box and adds a few more capabilities. So the new version will look and work quite similar, although there will be a few convenient changes:

• Independent of Google Chrome or Chromium browser: No need to install anything, just clone the repo. The required runtime library of NW.js is contained.
• Regular update via git/wstool: No need to manually update the app after updating the repo.
• Sourcecode instead of binary: The sourcecode is distributed and directly executed. You can make local changes just as you can in any other code.
• No dependency on rosbridge/roslib: Although rosbridge is a great tool for connecting web apps to ROS, there have been a couple of complaints about its experienced stability in some cases. Now it is possible to choose an alternative approach directly based on inter-process communication. The new app is integrated more tightly with ROS.
• Automated discovery of states and behaviors: No manual configuration of the app required anymore. You can add a tag to the export block of the ROS package.xml of a package and the app will know which states and behaviors are available. This is not only much more convenient, it also ensures consistency with the sourced ROS workspace.
• Multiple behavior packages: Along with the automated discovery, the way how behaviors are detected is changed. In the new version, ROS packages containing behaviors will work the same way as for states and multiple behavior packages can be used. Behaviors will be grouped in these packages, so creating a new behavior will not require a catkin_make anymore.
• Configuration import/export across machines: Configurations can now be shared across machines, there is no unique file entry id required anymore.
• Confirmation for closing the window: It is now possible to interrupt closing the window. If unsaved changes are detected, you have the chance to save them now before they are lost. However, ctrl+c in the terminal will still close the app right away.
• Open code editor from app: If you need to modify the manual parts of a behavior file, you can now open the file in your favourite text editor or SDK by clicking a single button in the app.
• Improved support for key combinations: Use familiar key combinations in the statemachine editor. Ctrl+c to copy selected states, ctrl+v to paste, ctrl+z to undo, etc. The tool overlay which opens on ctrl+space will still be available nevertheless.

I hope this improves the usability of FlexBE for all of you and it will ensure that FlexBE can continue beyond the end of Google Chrome Apps.

Since this is a major structural change, the new app will be made available in a new repo: flexbe_app. Watch or Star it now to not miss the initial release.

[pschillinger]

An initial version has been uploaded. It worked quite stable for me when testing it, but of course, please be careful and provide feedback if something unexpected happens.

[awesomebytes]

This is great news! I'm just starting to get into the usage of FlexBE and the only thing that didn't sound absolutely exciting to me was the fact the GUI was a Chrome App. Now that is solved! You'll hear from me soon :) @pschillinger thank you for your fantastic work.

[zengxiaolei]

Hope this APP can be developed and maintained in near future. @pschillinger