Part 6: Setup

Installing packages required for the app

So far, we haven’t dealt with installing the packages needed for Transmission to work. Nor did we take care of performing the initial configuration for Transmission. FreedomBox takes care of installing all the Debian packages required for our app to work. All we need to do is call the base class method in the setup() method that of the TrasmissionApp class that is called during installation. The base class setup() method in turn calls setup() on the Packages component which performs the actual installation:

__init__.py

class TransmissionApp(app_module.App):
    ...

    def setup(self, old_version):
        """Install and configure the app."""
        super().setup(old_version)

        new_configuration = {
            'rpc-whitelist-enabled': False,
            'rpc-authentication-required': False
        }
        privileged.merge_configuration(new_configuration)

        self.enable()

The first time this app’s view is accessed, FreedomBox shows an app installation page and allows the user to install the app. After the app installation is completed, the user is shown the app’s configuration page.

In case of our app Transmission, first we are installing the Debian packages (by calling base class setup() method), then performing the first time configuration on the app using the action script and finally enabling the app.