Click packages are the new packaging format used in Ubuntu Touch. We show how to install such a click package on your (USB-connected) device with the command line. In a second part, we show how to use the phablet shell instead of the adb shell.

Installing a click package

The developer mode must be enabled for all the following steps: Settings > About Phone > Developer Mode.

Push the click file to your device:

daniel@laptop:~$ adb push org.ubuntu.myapp_0.1.0_armhf.click /home/phablet/Downloads/

Now, we can login on the device and install the package:

daniel@laptop:~$ adb shell
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~# pkcon install-local --allow-untrusted \
Downloads/org.ubuntu.myapp_0.1.0_armhf.click 

The adb shell doesn't work correctly if the terminal size is less than 80x24: the line wrapping bug makes it hard to enter long commands like the ones above. A better solution is to use the phablet shell.

Using phablet-shell instead of adb shell

We install and configure the phablet-tools as follows:

sudo apt-get install phablet-tools 

Because phablet-shell is based on ssh, we need to create a ssh public key:

ssh-keygen 

We are done! Start the phablet-shell to install the click package (like above):

phablet-shell
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~# pkcon install-local --allow-untrusted \
Downloads/org.ubuntu.myapp_0.1.0_armhf.click