libertine-launch manpage needs to be updated to better explain its usage

[doniks]

Starting
libertine-launch -i vivid bash
is rather unintuitive for new users.

1) it prints out some (benign?) errors, creating the impression it had failed
2) it offers no positve feedback to assert that you are now indeed inside the container

Personally, I have wrapped the command into a shell script that sets the variable debian_chroot to the id of the container. Consequently, it turns the prompt into:

(vivid)phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$

The PS1 variable in ubuntu's regular bash configuration prefixes the value of this variable in the prompt.

Maybe libertine-launch could set that variable? Or maybe there is some better way to make it a bit more intuitive.

Comments 10-11 in this question are a recent example of how this confuses users : https://answers.launchpad.net/libertine/+question/408659

[Christopher Townsend (townsend)]

Hello,

I'm really not sure what your intent is when using libertine-launch. libertine-launch is really only used by ubuntu-app-launch to launch a graphical application within the Unity 8 shell and not intended for the command line.

If you need to run commands within a Libertine container, I suggest using libertine-container-manager's "hidden" exec subcommand. If you are wanting to launch a graphical app in Unity 8 via the command line, I suggest using ubuntu-app-launch.

Probably a good way to make this less confusing is to update the man page to reflect what I just said:)

[Stephen M. Webb (bregma)]

Perhaps the simplest way to make it clear that libertine-launch is not a regular user-level command-line executable would be to move it out of $PATH and put it in /usr/lib/libertine (for example).

[doniks (kaabud-lp)]

The intent is to have a shell to use command line applications that are installed inside the container, like git or gcc and have access to my documents with these tools and have access to any results produced by these tools from the regular touch system.

E.g., consider the following:

libertine-launch -i vivid bash
cd Documents
git clone user@server:project ./project

now open Libre office and open that document that's in ~/Documents/project/foo.odt
work on it
export it as a pdf

now switch to dekko and write that email where you attach foo.pdf

I thought that libertine-launch IS the proposed way how a regular user would get command-line access, because
a) the exec command is hidden and
b) it doesn't mount things like ~/Documents

[Christopher Townsend (townsend)]

The whole intent of Libertine is allowing users to install and use X graphical applications in Debian package format on their Unity 8 devices. Given that is the goal, if a user wants a shell inside the container to run command line applications, then our suggestion is to install a terminal application such as Terminator or Sakura inside the container and then run that terminal application from within Unity 8.

I'm really not sure where it's documented that libertine-launch is supposed to be used to get command line access inside a container. libertine-launch was only developed as a helper application for ubuntu-app-launch to start X applications in a Libertine container (and later to launch snap applications).

As an aside, I understand power users want more control from the command line such as ssh'ing in to the device and then accessing a container from the ssh session, but honestly, that is really beyond the intended design and scope of Libertine.

[Larry Price (larryprice)]

I'll chime in that using `libertine-launch` is a convenient way to do these quick-and-dirty command line tasks, but we are content to let it continue to be "quick-and-dirty" because that is not its primary use case.

I wonder if we could get around all of this with some kind of new command called `libertine-shell $container_id` that would do all of the bind-mounts, etc, and launch a bash or ssh session inside the container. In that case, `libertine-shell` without an argument would use the default container.