Berty's GnoMobile / Gno Native Kit Builder Journey

[jefft0]

This documents the journey of Berty into Gno.land.

The two objectives of the first month of our Builder project are:

1. Create a Proof of Concept of an existing Gno example app running on a mobile phone. This will prove that we can run Gno on a mobile (or identify issues that need further work). The PoC code will go into https://github.com/gnolang/gnomobile .

2. Based on this experience to produce a detailed technical plan for further work to create a framework where developers can bring their Gno apps to mobile.

In this Journey, we will introduce our team, document our experience using Gno, track our issues and solutions, and keep meeting notes.

[moul]

On our side:

• gnomobile repo created: https://github.com/gnolang/gnomobile
• github & signal configuration

On Berty's side:

• grant PR on ecosystem-fund-grants
• present themselves and participate during recurring calls
• experiment with contracts, discover gno, open issues, make feedback
• M0
• M1

[jefft0]

Introducing our team

Rémi (@D4ryl00)

• At Berty, he is the specialist in Wesh Network:
  • Development of the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) drivers
  • Improved overall stability of the app
  • Separated Wesh Network from Berty Messenger as a standalone library
• My contribution to our Berty - Gno journey:
  • Get the Gno code running on mobile
  • Maintain our code contributions at GnoMobile

Jeff (@jefft0)

• At Berty, working on
  • gomobile-ipfs
  • Wesh Network API + blog posts
• My contribution to our Berty - Gno journey:
  • Main contact point with Gno team
  • Documentation / issue maintenance
  • Tooling for stress testing

Fun fact: Was at RSA the company when A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto was published.

Iuri (@iuricmp)

• At Berty, worked on:
  • UI/UX improvements and bug fixes for Berty Messenger and the Berty/Wesh Network websites
  • Wesh Mobile Package: created the initial setup of a React Native Expo library that exposes Wesh API on mobile
• My contribution to our Berty - Gno journey:
  • Develop a mobile application to demonstrate the usage of Gno on mobile devices

[jefft0]

Onboarding experience with r/demo/boards

• All of us (Remi, Jeff, Iuri) have created accounts and run the r/demo/boards quick start guide on our local computers.
• Remi opened issue 1031 asking if all the READMEs should link to the quick start guide on GitHub instead of on the test net (which is outdated).
• Based on our onboarding experience, Jeff opened PR 1034 to updated the quick start guide. Please see the PR description for details.
• Iuri encountered the problem where you can't update the existing code of a realm. Of course many others have also found this counter-intuitive and there is an open issue. We look forward to a resolution to code versioning.

[jefft0]

Progress: Test node and code repo

• Jeff set up a test node on a server at Berty with a public IP. We will use this in developing the app to interact with r/demo/boards on mobile.
• Remi has opened an ongoing draft PR in the new GnoMobile repo. This will contain our code contribution for a framework to run Gno on mobile.

[jefft0]

Gno developer call: August 9

We (Remi, Jeff and Iuri) participated in our first developer call and introduced ourselves.

We explained that we're writing an app where we need to create a transaction by calling the Go code directly (not with the CLI). Manfred and Jae discussed plans for using the Tendermint 2 code as a "library", but not ready yet. Manfred said that, for now, we can use the same approach as other tools like:

• https://github.com/gnolang/gno/blob/master/tm2/pkg/crypto/keys/client/call.go
• https://github.com/gnolang/gno/blob/master/gno.land/cmd/gnofaucet/serve.go
• https://github.com/gnolang/blog/blob/main/gnoblog-cli/client.go
• https://github.com/gnolang/gno-js-client/blob/main/src/wallet/wallet.ts

[jefft0]

Progress: Demo videos

• Our Gno onboarding experience and setting up our own testnet node (Jeff)
  https://www.loom.com/share/2858d64f3f9144ed8702c5e1cb9155d8
• Gnomobile - Presentation of the boilerplate gomobile structure (Remi)
  https://www.loom.com/share/fc6d9a89d1d74c7ba5ad8c05b92781d5

[jefft0]

Progress: Domain name for Berty testnet node

With Manfred's help on the DNS, we have a nice domain name for our Gno testnet node:
http://testnet.gno.berty.io

The help pages use this in the copy/paste text for the command:
http://testnet.gno.berty.io/r/demo/boards?help

[jefft0]

Progress: First GnoMobile demo video

Part of milestone M0 is a proof-of-concept for calling a Gno realm function from mobile (GnoMobile). Here is a demo video of the initial PoC app called GnoBoard which interacts with a Gno board.
https://www.loom.com/share/028f37f68b34425992baa2c77d0cf6b5

This demonstrates:

• Gno wallet on mobile. This uses the keybase of a local directory like the command line tools.
• Using existing Go code for Gno as an API. (For the moment, many private functions are copied as-is, but there will be an API.)
• Interacting with the blockchain from mobile. (Can be configured to use testnet3, etc.)

The pull request mentioned is here: gnolang/gnonative#3
The message board on our testnet shown is here: http://testnet.gno.berty.io/r/demo/boards:gnomobile/1

[jefft0]

Meeting with Guilhem: gnoclient and gomobile dependencies

We had a meeting with Guilhem.

• We began a discussion on finishing PR feat: add gno.land/pkg/gnoclient (Gno.land Go client) gno#1047 for the gnoclient package which provides an API for using Gno.land from a Go application. We will use this in GnoMobile. We discussed the minimal functionality that we need for gnoclient and how we can help during milestone M1. More to come.
• Remi and Guilhem dug into a dependency issue for using gomobile with the Gno code. As a result, Remi created an issue Ambiguous import in a btcd dependency gno#1063 which details the problem and a near-term solution which is implemented in related pull request fix: remove ambiguous import by downgrading btcutil v1.1.1 to v1.0.0 gno#1064. This PR is merged.

[jefft0]

Progress: Build dependencies, Android, estimating gas fees

• After discussion in Wednesday's public call, Remi created pull request fix: remove ambiguous import by downgrading btcutil v1.1.1 to v1.0.0 gno#1064 which was merged. This resolves a compatibility problem with using gomobile with the Gno code.
• That fix allowed Remi to make PR Fix: get app dir from native part to initialize Gno's structures gnonative#7 to correctly compile for Android. Now the "gnoboard" example app works on both Android and iOS.
• Jeff made some small PRs to fix the "getting started" link on awseome-gno and the Gno.land web page. This should avoid some frustration for newcomers. chore: use the Github version of the Boards realm tutorial gnoverse/awesome-gno#45 chore: "Install" links to the Github version of the Boards realm tutorial www.gno.land#17 .
• The GnoMobile framework needs to help the app to estimate gas fees for a calling Realm functions. Jeff did some digging in the code to understand why the stated "gas used" is different than the actual coins subtracted from the user's account. Maybe we can help resolve this. See "Gas used" seems unrelated to the number of coins subtracted gno#1070

Iuri continues to work on the UI for the "gnoboard" example app and will have some cool demos soon.