Creating a new emulator is very confusing

[Stuart Langridge]

Creating a new emulator from Ubuntu SDK is very confusing. As per the attached screenshot, I have to choose a "channel". The options open to me are: devel, devel-proposed, bq-stable, bq-rc, rc-proposed, and custom channel. I do not know what any of these mean. Which is being run on my Meizu MX-4? Which is being run on my Bq E4.5? The phone does not list any of these names in System Settings > About this phone, or in System Settings > About this phone > OS Build Details. The "OS" listed in "About this phone" is "Ubuntu 15.04 (r3)", which seems to not have anything to do with any of these channels. How can I create an emulator which is running the same software as my phone? How can I create an emulator which is running the same software as a phone that someone who is not a developer would have? The point of creating an emulator is to use it to test applications to ensure they will work on phones in the wild, but I don't know how to set it up so that it is emulating phones in the wild.

[Zoltan Balogh (bzoltan)]

If you want to create an emulator what is (close to*) identical with the bq E.4.5 released image then you want to use the bq-stable.

The -rc stands for release candidate and the rc-proposed is the staging.

The devel and devel-proposed as it is used in the Ubuntu terminology stands for the Ubuntu development release. Right now it is a wily based image.

More details about the channels and channel names you can find here: https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/start/ubuntu-for-devices/image-channels/

But sorry for the confusion. The SDK tools do not define the channel names, just shows them in the list.

* close ti identical means that the emulator is an i386 based qemu image not an armhf based real one

[Timo Jyrinki (timo-jyrinki)]

I think on average devel, devel-proposed and custom should not be in the list, or at least the list should be sorted and more verbose. With the current selection, the top most ones should probably be: rc-proposed, bq-stable, bq-rc

[Stuart Langridge (sil)]

Those are still code names; "rc-proposed" or "bq-rc" or "bq-stable" are things understood by platform developers. App developers do not and should not have to understand them. I'd expect the emulator list to not actually be a list at all -- create an emulator which is running the software that a real person would find on their phone after buying that phone from the manufacturer/carrier and then running "Updates" on the phone. If there might be more than one of those, then an emulator list which looks like "Bq Aquaris E4.5/E5", "Meizu MX4" would be much better.

 If there needs to be an "advanced" section listing channel names, that's fine, of course, but the channel names are both meaningless and confusing to app devs.