Gnome Interface For Portage?

Lowspirit · Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2003 4:56 pm Post subject: Progress?

Desirable state?

I for one would be more then

with only basic tree browsing capabilities to browse Installed and Non-installed packages, in categories etc... I can do the rest from console.

I have zero overview as it is now and since I've had this install in for more then 6 months I think there are plenty of forgotten emerged junk that I could clean out, and having the tree easily overviewable and browsable locally would simplify it when looking for new stuff to emerge too cause I always visit the Online Package Database for that atm and that's not practical, and it's not representative of the tree either since I'm on ~ branch.

Still eagerly awaiting a portage manager for us poor gnomies.

dreamer3 · Guru Joined: 24 Sep 2002 Posts: 553

slacker · Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2003 8:16 am Post subject:

Today I decided to attempt to write a small test program for a gui interface for portage. This is really preliminary, but this is sort of what I would envision a gnome portagemaster would look like...

screenshot

I think a gnome portagemaster would be really useful to me....
I plan to hopefully have an operational program sometime in the next few weeks. Unless my baby is born before I get version 0.1 out, then I might be busy for a month or so. If anyone is interested let me know, drop me an email.

EDIT: Replaced img tags with url tags (wide image). -- kanuslupus
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IWBCMAN · Guru Joined: 25 Jun 2002 Posts: 474

slacker

that looks great! really impressive, hats off for your initiative....

unfortunately my programming skills are covered in cob-webs, half abandoned in a dark corner of my attic, otherwise I would offer to help you write it(although I look forward to looking at your code, preferably before it gets so complex that I can't follow it anymore....)

I have some questions though:

have you thought about implementing this idea from within nautilus ? (I have no idea if such is feasible or doable, but integrating the gentoo packaging system into the WM would be a first step towards providing a complete gentoo-desktop solution. )

Would it be possible to have multiple different views of the programs contained in the portage tree ? (I like the idea of the portage tree, but when it comes to looking for software to install the tree metaphor is not very intuitive; I end up spending a lot of time looking for where I have to look, because the portage tree is not functionally organized from a users perspective, albeit from a developers perspective-some packages are only dependencies for user apps, and some are merely apps-one could argue forever how such things should be visually oganized, and of course the portage tree as is, is work already done, but one could have an alphabetical listing, and one could have enhanced categories-ie. multimedia apps, internet/networking apps, office apps, games, and corresponding ones for libs-and although this may be beyond the scope of what you wish to do- would it be possible to show an emerge -pe foo minus all packages which belong to "system"-ie. to see the relative and not absolute package dependencies ?)

will there be a window-view which simply displays the portage description of each package ? (I imagine one could also implement this as a context sensitive pop-up which shows up when one holds the mouse over as package)

How do you plan to implement root access ? will one have to boot gnome as root ? run gnoportage as su, ie. from a command line ? or will there be a dialog which pops up and asks for the password upon start ? or which only pops up when one wants to do an install/delete or rsync ?

Are you planning on implementing the additional configuration options which kportage is beginning to include ?

(please not I am not demanding anything, your contribution here is outstanding, and I will be personally very happy with virtually any offering which is somewhat stable and usefull, regardless of any whiz-bang features-my questions are also sugesstions........)

please keep up the good work.....

knittel · n00b Joined: 29 Nov 2002 Posts: 50

I'd rather see a GTk2 than a gnome2 Version (more genereic, nothing against gnome2 at all) and I would prefer pgsql to mysql.

But now for something completely different: desired feature

A View that only lists installed packages (basically the output of /usr/lib/portage/pkglist), with a rightclick option to [pretend] update it, and optionally displays its dependencies. If possible both sides (what installed program depends on this file and on what programs does this build depend on).

Talking about database: The ability to store per port USE flags (and ACCEPT_KEYWORD flag). This would make life tremendously easier, since you do not have to edit make.conf for just two or three ports you want to install that differ from the default settings. So when installing a piece of software it naturally checks make.conf and after that the database wether different USE Settings are applicable to that port (and dependend files to be installed).
That would rock for "emerge world" big time, I suppose. Especially, since you may selectively install "unstable" ports. Provided, initiated by gportage, of course.

Next step would be replacing /var/db with [a central] pgsql databse to be able to do unattended setups and have centralized package management. But thats more an issue for portage itself, I suspect. Getting megalomaniac now, I'm afraid.

slacker · Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2003 7:29 pm Post subject:

axxackall · Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2003 9:32 pm Post subject:

How about Zope? Have anyone considered Zope as web-GUI for Portage?

Seriously, Zope already have hierarchical catalog management. And it's written on Python - the favorite language of Portage programmers!

Why would one need a "local" GUI for package management? Is it any reason to use any specific functions of Gnome or KDE panels?

All is needed for Packages management (comparing to CLI) is GUI. The best GUI today is Web, interface safely transparent for firewalls and still power enough to build intuitive UI applications.

I recommend to read more about Zope on their web site www.zope.org

natemccallum · n00b Joined: 24 Jan 2003 Posts: 23

Any progress on this project!?

slacker · Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2003 1:20 am Post subject:

Zope might be great, and it would be a great asset to gnome if one existed.
But I see it in two ways.
One, zope might have hierarchical catalog management but I don't think that means I should use zope instead of nautilus (for example I'm sure you could write a zope file manager) .
and second, kde already has a gui system for portage why not gnome.
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bobafettm · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2002 Posts: 3 Location: MI

Lowspirit · Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2003 12:11 am Post subject: Support

Really glad to see things happening in the GTK2 portage frontend department

Just some quick comments on screenshot (which obviously is a early draft but you can't post a screenshot and not expect enthusiastic comments) :

* HIG compliance.
Always good.

* Listview icons.
No idea if this is doable through some glade control but tiny packages (like in KPortage) are great instant visual cues on a package status.

* Tray icon.
Having it minimize to notification area during rsyncs/compiles would be a neat feature.

Personally all I need a UI for initially is to keep track of what crap I've installed without having to pico through my world file, so what's seen on that screenshot now (if it's not a mockup) would more then suffice for my needs.
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slacker · Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2003 12:36 am Post subject:

Thanks for the comments, and it is a really early draft. I'm really surprised to get alot of positive feedback, and I appreciate it. Although I don't feel like i've gotten it to a point for even an initial release it yet.

slacker · Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 1:47 am Post subject:

Ok, well I have done alittle more coding and I am now able to check whether or not a file is installed or not, by using pkglist. So that is the last feature I will add at this point, the last two things are a. check to make sure when you run the program that you are root or suid .. b. clean the code up, get rid of straggler strings that i didn't free, etc, giving the variables better names.
I started the cleaning process today, after this I will release version 0.1.

This is the latest development screenshot.
http://gnoportage.sourceforge.net/test4.png
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slacker · Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 5:53 am Post subject:

Ok, I've cleaned the original test program up alittle bit, and although it isn't anywhere near where I want it to be, I thought I'd give u guys a link to see what I've done so far. So I can start getting feedback, I think I will have to restructure things alot when I release version 0.2. I'd like to hear people's comments about the code I wrote good bad or indifferent, constructive criticism is appreciated, so that I may learn more, I am by no means a great programmer, but I strive to make myself better, I want to contribute to open source and gentoo, because I feel they've given me alot, so plz don't flame me too much. Hopefully I can improve things to a higher standard. It didn't take me that long to assemble this program so it is by no ways complete. If something doesn't work let me know, what this program should do right now in the test phase is
a. display the portage tree
b. mark installed packages.
c. emerge $package, emerge $package -p, emerge sync (doesn't automatically redo treeview after done, so if things are deleted you will have to hit the build tree button to refresh).
d. make sure you are either root or su when the program starts.

http://gnoportage.sourceforge.net/gnoportage-0.1.tar.gz
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IWBCMAN · Guru Joined: 25 Jun 2002 Posts: 474

slacker,

way cool

I downloaded your file unpacked it and did a ./configure and make. make failed after about one minute with the following messages(i am using id3lib-3.8.2,glibc-2.3.1-r3,gcc-3.2.2, autoconf-2.54,automake-1.63, gnome2.2)

Lowspirit · Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 3:51 pm Post subject:

Okey got it compiled and running, i'll go straight to the feedback part :wink:

1. Tree rebuild progress.
Perhaps a statusbar at the bottom with a progressbar stowed into it. It certainly rebuilds faster then KPortage (a year or so since I ran it so it could have improved) so it's really on the edge if a progressbar would be needed or not but i'd l

2. Installed packages.
I still don't have a way to view only installed packages, I have to click through each little section to see if it's installed, not all that efficient.

3. Package search.
Not really essential or something that you should bother with in this early stage, but such a function is missed.

4. Sync.
No way to abort it, and that tiny piece of the screen it shows it on doesn't seem to scroll to follow the action. This is one of the big things that really could benefit ease of use (new user friendly) if it was hooked into a UI that just monitored stages, basically a dialog of some sort that shows "Connecting to rsync server..." "Connection established, recieving list..." "Syncing lists..." "Last stage, Updating portage...". Or something like that, while displaying a happy spinning icon or something.

5. Icons.
Trivial issue but... sync is the only one that makes sense to me. There are plently of gnome stock icons out there, jimmacs entire collection is pretty much LGPL, your bound to find something more fitting there, doesn't have to be eye boggling, just make more sense :
http://jimmac.musichall.cz/ikony.php3

Hope you'll take it as constructive feedback, all issues is trivial really except #2, which essentially is the show stopper for me that made me uninstall waiting for further updates.

Oh and you should make an ebuild for it, or someone should... I tried but apparently I suck.
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slacker · Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 5:29 pm Post subject:

IWBCMAN: Sorry I will have to look into this more, I have media-libs/id3lib-3.8.2 installed on my computer also, and it built ok for me, but I am not using gnome 2.2 yet, so maybe thats the problem. I'll try to make sure the next thing I put out builds for u.

Lowspirit: Thank you very much for the input, it's excellent with alot of good suggestions. I want to know what everyone thinks. I don't think what you said is negative in any way.
I thought the tree might have been slower than Kportagemaster, I was worried about that alot. I don't forsee the tree getting too much slower than it is now. A status bar would be a good idea and I thought about a progress bar too.

pjp · Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 5:41 pm Post subject:

You might consider starting a sourceforge project page (or similar).
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brad · n00b Joined: 29 Nov 2002 Posts: 6

Here's an idea on the above compile error. It's trying to include /usr/local/include/utils.h which in turn tries to include the offending c++ header. On my stable, 1.4 gentoo
install it's including /usr/include/utils.h and compiles just fine. This header is a part of media-sound/cdparanoia.

I'm curious if you have cdparanoia installed. If so, it shouldn't be looking in /usr/local/include before the system include directory.

Might want to list cdparanoia as a dependency for this software or just use the similar glib functions (since it's already a gtk project).

Gooba · n00b Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Posts: 6 Location: Fremont, Ca.

When I first installed I ran into a problem of wanting to install all my mail programs and they were conflicting with stuff from the defaults installed when I ran the "emerge system". The problem was that I didn't know what the defaults were and had no simple way of finding out what was installed so I wound up doing "emerge -s <app>" for everything in the net-mail directory before I figured out what I needed to unmerge to get what I wanted.

lanatha · Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 11:58 pm Post subject:

Great idea! Good execution, too.

A bunch of ideas:

1) Add a bar of filters for the package list; that way you don't have to handle it specially, just have the list of available packages get filtered according to various selections. For example, 'installed', 'not installed', 'outdated', etc.

2) Handle changelogs with a right-click situation; right-click the package name and hit 'changelog' to see the whole changelog; right-click a specific version and hit 'changelog' to get all changes since that version.

3) Icons! Instead of a 'installed' clicker, you could use item-colors and icon-styles to identify package states. eg, masked/blocked packages show up red, development packages yellow. Uninstalled packages get a little box, tbz2's get a box with an indicator of some sort, installed packages are open boxes. Maybe a little grey box with a cobweb for nixed packages.

4) Virtual packages, somehow. No real ideas on this one.

5) Interactive package install/uninstall lists. I select a package and say 'queue for install', it queues it up, and all of its dependencies. Same thing for updates. Then, I can go back and remove certain items from the list, or tweak the installed versions, and It'll grey out the packages I messed up the dependencies for. In this manner, I can play with the possible package installations, and then set a script to running.

6) Important: Possibly more a portage thing, but the tool should keep installing packages if a package from the emerge fails, as long as dependencies aren't broken. For example, say I have 83 packages to update for Gnome-2.2, and I leave it go overnight, and say it fails on package #1. *curse*

Anyway... more where that came from. :-P

IWBCMAN · Guru Joined: 25 Jun 2002 Posts: 474

brad,

thank you for your tip - I have often installed software from source using ./configure, make, make install-without realizing that it defaults to "/usr/local" as stardard prefix-this in turn has led to different files being installed in both /usr/include and /usr/local/include(so basically I probably caused this program onece when trying to manually install a version of id3lib which I needed for a specific program-which come to think of it, kept saying it could not find the id3lib includes........whoops)

Slacker,
my solution- to getting your program up and running was to simply temporarily move my /usr/local/include to /usr/local/oldinclude and to specify --includer=/usr when I configured your program-with these two steps if compiled fine and WOW-it works....I will post again after I have played around with it some more.....I will mention though quickly that a little work is needed regarding spacing(a least with larger fonts) between the menus(ie. text) and the button bar- but other than that it looks good, take a look at my screenshot (here:http://iwbcman.homelinux.org/gnome2_2+gtk2_apps.html)
to see what I mean....it looks very,very promising.....

Gooba · n00b Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Posts: 6 Location: Fremont, Ca.

It's probably kind of a newbie feature and I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but an interface that says somewhere "This package is equivalent to/in conflict with: <package list>" would be great. For someone just starting out it'd be useful to have some basic info like "Install postfix *or* sendmail *or* ssmtp".

When you're installing individual packages or even a whole system it'd be really handy to have it up front tell you what the conflict was rather than just crap out because there was one.

slacker · Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2003 4:50 am Post subject:

I think I have figured out why it wanted utils.h and fixed it. Really sorry about that hopefully now it won't give anyone a problem.
I fixed it and you can download a new tarball from here
http://gnoportage.sourceforge.net/
There is also a burning question on my mind, is the screenshot on that page close to what you guys want to see with the installed package tree?

IWBCMAN · Guru Joined: 25 Jun 2002 Posts: 474

slacker,

now that your program has successfully compiled for me, I have had a chance to look at it. It looks great - here are some suggestions, some have already been pointed out, so here goes:
1) definitely shoot for HIG compliance-this should be a great gnome application -a the program mature so will its complexity- menus, seperate windows, and dialogues -coordination and planning are central to a good gui, and gnoportage should be, IMHO, primarily a GREAT GUI frontend to the incredible backend functionality of portage.

2) I don't know if you are on the gentoo mailing lists or doing the IRC thing, but be sure to inform yourself as to the current and planned direction of portage itself, so as not to have to duplicate efforts-portage may be getting more reverse dependency tracking here soon, gnoportage should orient itself with the planned functionality of portage, only offering "more" where this does not mean duplicated effort...

3) well why not build ebuild editing right into gnoportage, I frequently edit ebuils, so why not have the window for displaying ebuild contents, be writable, with perhaps a "edit" button, which would a) open the already displayed ebuild for editing and b) launch the "file open" dialogue, and c) allow for, via the "close file" dialog, changing the ebuild name which is to be saved, and where it should be saved to(ie. open an ebuild in the normal /usr/portage tree and then modify it saving it in the /usr/local/portage tree for experimenting.....) ALTERNATELY: one "edit" button next to the ebuild display window....and a "file open" entry in the file menu.....

4) a kind of "favorites" or bookmarks like "/etc/make.conf" and "package.mask"in one of the menus for editing these files- of course you may want to make a more fundamental decision as to the approach used in this GUI -ie. you may wish to just stick with a graphical represenatation of the options listed in make.conf(somewhat like kportage does this now) and have no text editing capabilities at all....or choose for more direct interaction with the portage system via direct editing capabilites- this is your choice.....And of course you could probably just launch gnome-editor with the buttons and menu entries-just send the URL to gnome-temrinal.....

just some thoughts and suggestions...thanks again for your work