How to test artifacts from pull requests for Keyman for Linux

Each pull request (PR) that touches files from Keyman for Linux or core processor gets build with GitHub Actions. Testing those packages requires some manual steps.

Prerequisites

• You'll need to be logged in to GitHub in order to be able to download the packages from GitHub Actions.

Downloading and installing PR packages

Downloading

To download the build artifacts for Linux it is easiest to follow the "Test Artifacts" link in the "User Test Results" comment of the PR. After downloading, unzip the files.

Alternative ways

Expand to see alternative ways to install build artifacts for Linux

1. Another way to download the build artifacts for Linux is click on the link on the PR popup on the Keyman status page, and then unzip the files.

2. go through status section of PR on GitHub

Another option is to look in the status section of the PR on GitHub and click on the "Details" link behind "Debian packaging":

On the GitHub action page click on "keyman-binarypkgs" link in the Artifacts section:

Clicking the link will download the artifacts as a zip file. Unpack the zip file.

Installing

You can install the packages in a terminal window with:

cd $HOME/Downloads/keyman-binarypkgs # replace with the location of the .deb files
sudo apt update
sudo apt install \
./{ibus-keyman,libkmnkbp0,keyman-system-service}*$(lsb_release -s -c)*$(dpkg --print-architecture).deb \
./{keyman,python3-keyman-config}*$(lsb_release -s -c)*all.deb

Starting with 17.0.195 the correct command sequence is:

cd $HOME/Downloads/keyman-binarypkgs # replace with the location of the .deb files
sudo apt update
sudo apt install \
./{ibus-keyman,libkeymancore,keyman-system-service}*$(lsb_release -s -c)*$(dpkg --print-architecture).deb \
./{keyman,python3-keyman-config}*$(lsb_release -s -c)*all.deb

Afterwards reboot the machine.

Sanity check

Before running more detailed tests, please run a quick sanity check to verify things are in the expected state:

• open the Keyman Configuration window: from the launcher, enter Keyman Configuration. Alternatively from the command line run km-config.
• install any Keyman keyboard, either from keyman.com (Download button), or from a local .kmp file (Install button)
• verify that the keyboard appears in the dropdown with installed keyboards:

If the keyboard doesn't appear in the dropdown list

• open a terminal window and run ps -C ibus-daemon -f. Paste the output in a pull request comment.
• then reboot
• and check the dropdown again

If it still doesn't appear, scream for help - something is likely wrong with the system 😄