Table of Contents:

Apertis follows an app-centric architecture. This means that the development is more vertical and not layered as in automotive domain. This reduces dependency and leads to less time to market.

SDK is designed to make app development fast and easy while maintaining backward compatibility. The system gets upgraded periodically; however the applications should not be affected. This is achieved by writing apps against SDK APIs. The SDK APIs are ensured to maintained backward compatibility.

The SDK will not only expose native system services integrated into the OS, but also complete high level features which are of interest for multiple Applications. The APIs are classified into Enabling APIs and SDK APIs.

  • SDK APIs: Realize the high level features of the SDK behind the scene (e.g. an adressbook service which can be used by Apps to store and retrieve contact data in a joint place). They are dedicated APIs, provided with good documentation and sample code, easy to use and with backward compatibility guaranteed exposed with the intention to be used by the Apps.

  • Enabling APIs: These are APIs from libraries/services that are typically taken from Open Source (for example, Telepathy, Tracker). Apps which use these APIs directly need to maintain the stability on their own due to API or ABI breakages. Effort may be made to ease or remove transition issues when ABI or API breakages happen.

    Trying to encapsulate these into SDK APIs will be a continuous process within Apertis.

  • OS APIs: These are more fundamental APIs, usually used by the Enabling APIs to provide higher-level functionality. Platform upgrades may require adapting applications to new APIs and/or ABIs for these.

Please see the contribution process for guidance if your application depends on a component that is not including in Apertis.

Many of the Apertis specific packages are named after sites in the UK where significant Roman archaeological hoards were found.

Infrastructure

Some infrastructure applications and services also need to be available as part of the system to provide the basic UI even if there are no user focused applications:

Enabling Components

OS APIs

  • eglibc: Basic OS interfaces
  • GLib: Basic programming framework
  • OSTree: Atomic software updates
  • systemd: Service management service, used as both a system service and a user service. The system instance is process 1 (the first process launched by the kernel after leaving the early-boot environment), and is responsible for starting and monitoring all system services and all user sessions. The per-user instance, systemd --user, manages user services.

Full package index

source package indices: Full package list in TSV format, categorized under different repository components, per platform release

UI Framework

Provides

  • In apertis, Clutter library is provided for UI creation.
  • Clutter is an open source software library for creating fast, compelling, portable, and dynamic graphical user interfaces.
  • Use Open GLES for rendering.
  • Comes with rich animation f/w with vast gesture support.
  • Provides layout management for easy lay-outing of widgets.

Enabling Components

OS APIs

Application Framework

Provides

  • Launching a new Application (Launch-mgr)
  • Explicit or implicit information (Combination of Action, URI, and MIME) can be used to determine an app to launch
  • Application life cycle management (activity-mgr)
  • Managing application launch history (LUM)
  • Audio management and audio priority handling(audio-manager)
  • Sharing mechanism
  • Application preferences (prefernce-mgr)
  • IPC communication (D-Bus)
  • View switching and in app back handling (View-Manager)

SDK services

  • Didcot: Service which mediates file opening by media type (content type, MIME type), URL opening by URL scheme, and other data sharing between user applications.

    Purpose Git repository
    Data sharing and file opening service https://gitlab.apertis.org/appfw/didcot

  • Newport: It manages large downloads for applications and other services running on the system (browser, email, other devices, etc).

    Purpose Git repository
    Download manager https://gitlab.apertis.org/appfw/newport

  • Rhosydd/Croesor: Rhosydd and Croesor are system services for handling access to sensors and actuators from applications. It provides a vendor-specific hardware API to connect to the services which control the hardware, and a SDK API for applications to use to access it.

    Purpose Git repository
    Handling access to sensors and actuators https://gitlab.apertis.org/appfw/rhosydd
    Sensor backend utilities https://gitlab.apertis.org/appfw/rhosydd

OS APIs

  • SQLite: Data storage
  • GMime: File format support
  • D-Bus: dbus-daemon is a platform component, used as both a user service and a system service. The system bus, dbus-daemon --system, connects applications and platform components to system services, and mediates their access to those system services. All components that are able to connect to the system bus may listen for signals (normally broadcasts) from authorized system services. All other accesses, including sending signals, are prevented unless they are specifically allowed by configuration. The per-user session bus, dbus-daemon --session, is a user service which connects user applications and user services together and mediates their communication.

Connectivity

Provides

  • Cellular and Wi-Fi Connection
    • Connman manages internet connections (Automatically connects to last used network).
  • Bluetooth
    • Based on Bluez and profiles (PBAP, A2DP, PAN)
    • Discovering / bonding / getting contacts from cell phone

SDK services

  • Beckfoot: Beckfoot is performs connection management and handles system connectivity services like network handling, wifi management, management of Bluetooth devices etc.

Enabling components

OS APIs

  • Bluez: Bluetooth technology

Internet Services

Provides

  • http clients
  • Connected services (PIM)

Enabling components

OS APIs

  • Folks: Aggregation of contacts & calendaring information
  • Soup: HTTP client/server library for GNOME

Multimedia

Provides

  • Playback of audio and video contents (local and streaming)
  • Capturing images and recording audio and video
  • Scanning & Playback of radio
  • Complete audio management
  • Extracting and displaying media content information
  • Integration of External apps like VLC.

SDK services

  • Prestwood: This service manages media and handles any activity related to the removable media (such as mounting them), UPnP devices, etc and indicates when they are ready for other services to communicate with them.
    Purpose Git repository
    Disk mounting service https://gitlab.apertis.org/hmi/prestwood

Enabling components

OS APIs

  • GStreamer: Low-level multimedia

    Apertis deploys only license verified Gstreamer plugins. Each Gstreamer plugin is developed under the LGPL license, but only gstreamer core, base and good provide license and patent-free plugins. The ugly and bad plugins are not considered safe from the license and patent issues. The “bad” plugins usually have API stablity issues as well as license problems. In addition, the plugins which have potential issues with patents, or license fees should be located in “ugly”. For more information, please refer to gstreamers documentation.

Navigation

Provides

  • Location based services
  • Map
  • Route guidance

SDK services

  • Traprain: Traprain is a set of libraries allowing navigation services, such as a car GPS routing application, to share navigation and routing information to third party applications.
    Purpose Git repository
    Navigation and routing libraries https://gitlab.apertis.org/appfw/traprain

Enabling components

Telephony

Provides

  • Call handling

Enabling components

  • ofono - includes consistent, minimal, and easy to use complete APIs for telephony

VoIP, IM and Groupware

Provides

  • IP telephony
  • Chat, etc.

Enabling components

OS APIs