[ABANDONED][Project] Wakka: A Gtk-Based Package Management Tool

minasmorath · 2011-02-25 06:31:38

==Summary==
Wakka is a loosely-GtkPacman based package manager, designed to cleanup the design of GtkPacman as well as the user interface, and update it to the latest and greatest releases of Python and pyGtk. It was originally developed as a project to make GtkPacman more stable on my own system, but I realized that many other users had the same problems that I did, thus the public release.

==History==
I found GtkPacman when I first came to Arch in 2009, being the GUI loving Ubuntu convert that I was, and I noticed that the last release had been in February of 2008, with no updates since, and no indication that the project was ongoing. Being a budding (and overconfident) Computer Science student I decided to take on the task of forking and maintaining this wonderful piece of software for the community. Yes, I could finally give back! Little did I realize that the task was far beyond my skills to accomplish.

I quickly found that cleaning this thing up enough for my own use was hard enough, and getting a decent realease out and dealing with bug reports and such would be neigh on impossible. It also didn't help that I had no idea what the heck pacman was doing in the backend, since apt and Synaptic were my only prior experience with package managers.

So there I lost steam, but from time to time I would open the code up and peck away at it, modifying bits here and there to work the way I wanted, but I eventually just took to the command line and lost sight of old Wakka. Well, just this last week I stumbled back upon it, and with my newfound pacman-fu and python-jitsu (not to mention free time) I decided to tackle this beast once and for all. I may not keep it up to date when I'm finished, and I may not even use the thing, but I'm going to clean this monster up and make it faster, more stable, and most of all more elegant (have you looked at the code for gtkPacman? It's not very elegant).

==Installation and Use==
You can now install Wakka from the AUR, but if you still wish to download and try other versions, you can grab a source tarball of any release from the project page on google code or get the newest stable release from the link below. You can also grab the bleeding edge (sometimes broken) svn code as well, but it's not useful for much other than development purposes.

Basically, unless you're going to dig through the code, use the AUR version, it's the safest.

==Files==
Pkgbuild: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=47037
Project: http://code.google.com/p/wakka-package-manager/
Source: http://wakka-package-manager.googlecode … .4.tar.bz2

==TODO==
- Speeeeed it up!
- Streamlining
- Bugfixes

Not particularly in that order, depending on the circumstances.

Last edited by minasmorath (2012-04-12 18:22:08)

swanson · 2011-02-25 07:48:35

Seems really nice after a quick first run. Keep up the good work!

Last edited by swanson (2011-02-25 07:49:22)

tomk · 2011-02-25 09:12:38

Moved as requested.

minasmorath · 2011-02-25 16:19:11

tomk wrote:

Moved as requested.

Thanks mate, I need to pay more attention during my late night posting shennanigans.

And Swanson, glad you like it. I have a ton more work to do, but right now this is what I've got. More will come soon.

Anonymo · 2011-02-25 18:43:34

Anyone has some screen shots?

minasmorath · 2011-02-25 19:21:02

Anonymo wrote:

Anyone has some screen shots?

(screenshot)

I was properly reprimanded for my ignorance of the image size restrictions. I knew them, just didn't pay attention to my image. My bad.

Last edited by minasmorath (2011-04-23 20:41:42)

minasmorath · 2011-02-25 20:21:21

My apologies, I forgot about the 250x limit, I'll just post the link to the cropped image: http://mitchell-nemitz.comuf.com/images/screenshot.png

Last edited by minasmorath (2011-04-23 20:42:17)

kgas · 2011-02-26 09:03:44

nice. As you used color code in the first column and also get sorted, no need for all/installed in the right pan imho.
Edit 1: I did not think for the physically challenged one. ok then for the right pan.

Last edited by kgas (2011-02-26 09:15:47)

swanson · 2011-02-26 11:06:14

Just did a daily update/upgrade and it worked very nicely indeed! All events present themselves clearly during the process. For me, as new Arch user, it is very nice to get a list of all available packages in the repos. The overview and search capabilties are handy, much more so than doing pacman -Ss "xxxxx" in terminal.

pablokal · 2011-02-26 14:22:00

Like it. Two suggestions: when you install something the sizes are not given of the packages to be installed (also the sizes of the dependencies); would be nice if these sizes were given, just like in pacman.
Second when installing by default the terminal is closed. I think it is good practice and even mandatory to see terminal feedback and would like to terminal feedback be visible by default (maybe make it invisible as an user option). Thanks and keep up the good work.

tomd123 · 2011-02-26 18:26:18

I have a request: can you provide a PKGBUILD in the aur?

minasmorath · 2011-02-26 21:12:44

swanson wrote:

Just did a daily update/upgrade and it worked very nicely indeed! All events present themselves clearly during the process. For me, as new Arch user, it is very nice to get a list of all available packages in the repos. The overview and search capabilties are handy, much more so than doing pacman -Ss "xxxxx" in terminal.

I'm glad you like it!

pablokal wrote:

when you install something the sizes are not given of the packages to be installed (also the sizes of the dependencies); would be nice if these sizes were given, just like in pacman.

I didn't even notice that, I'll add it asap.

pablokal wrote:

Second when installing by default the terminal is closed.

I don't know about opening it up, but you're right, hiding things is bad practice, so at least a summary and a more clear indication that stuff is going on.

tomd123 wrote:

can you provide a PKGBUILD in the aur?

Hopefully I can get the PKGBUILD up in the AUR within the next week, but I won't post it until everything is ported to Python 3 and I've done thorough testing. I also have a couple minor changes to make along the way, I don't like the way the update all button works right now, I'm changing it so that it just marks all changes in the install queue and alerts you of the packages to be updated, and I need to fix the 'required by' section of the package summary, since it uses an old method, and dependency size display.

All in all as soon as it's cleaned up I'll post it. I'll be going on spring break here in a week as well so I'll have plenty of time to work on it this week and next.

Thanks for the input, I'm on it!

Mitch

Giselher · 2011-02-28 06:52:34

pablokal wrote:

tomd123 wrote:
can you provide a PKGBUILD in the aur?
Hopefully I can get the PKGBUILD up in the AUR within the next week, but I won't post it until everything is ported to Python 3 and I've done thorough testing. I also have a couple minor changes to make along the way, I don't like the way the update all button works right now, I'm changing it so that it just marks all changes in the install queue and alerts you of the packages to be updated, and I need to fix the 'required by' section of the package summary, since it uses an old method, and dependency size display.
All in all as soon as it's cleaned up I'll post it. I'll be going on spring break here in a week as well so I'll have plenty of time to work on it this week and next.
Thanks for the input, I'm on it!
Mitch

But does pygtk work with Python3? (The website is drupal-ish ?!? at the moment)

Allan · 2011-02-28 09:06:51

pygtk is effectively dead and will not be ported to python3: http://allanmcrae.com/2010/12/python-3-module-support/

swanson · 2011-02-28 11:52:23

"way the update all button works right now, I'm changing it so that it just marks all changes in the install queue and alerts you of the packages to be updated, and I need to fix the 'required by' section of the package summary,"

Sounds very nice!

minasmorath · 2011-02-28 12:10:45

Allan wrote:

pygtk is effectively dead and will not be ported to python3: http://allanmcrae.com/2010/12/python-3-module-support/

Well that is disappointing. Last I heard they were updating and the 2.26.x series was Python3 compatible... I was keeping my hopes up. Meh, best move to PyGObject then. That is quite the let down.

tarakbumba · 2011-02-28 13:22:16

May be, pyqt can be used as it supports python3. Also i have a request, if applicable, can you add AUR support? A search function to only search Aur and install packages from aur in gui way. May be it can be achieved using yaourt, clyde or other wrappers instead of pacman?

minasmorath · 2011-02-28 13:48:42

tarakbumba wrote:

May be, pyqt can be used as it supports python3. Also i have a request, if applicable, can you add AUR support? A search function to only search Aur and install packages from aur in gui way. May be it can be achieved using yaourt, clyde or other wrappers instead of pacman?

I think I'm going to scrap the Python 3 upgrade for the time being and deal with the sudden and violent disappearance of PyGTK. That put quite the dent in my foolproof plans.

Concerning QT, I love the API, but I despise the product. It's a bit too bloated for my taste.

As far as AUR support goes, I've been using packer instead of yaourt for quite awhile and I really like it. It's fast and clean, and doesn't wrap every function of pacman in one script, it only does what it has to for complete AUR support. This is definitely within reach, and high up there on the priority list, I just want to implement it without adding another dependency. Worst case scenario you'll have to install a couple kb shell script along with Wakka to get the AUR working.

So now, my revised TODO list, in order:

000) DONE!!! Get this bugger in the AUR.
001) Fix package size display (Simple but a necessity).
010) Change how the Update All button works.
011) Open up VTE by default when applying operations.
100) AUR package installation (I would like to rely on an outside source/script, opinions?)
101) Python 3 support (Which means a new GUI toolkit. I don't like that prospect.)

That's the update for today, happy travels!

Last edited by minasmorath (2011-03-02 02:34:27)

minasmorath · 2011-03-02 01:15:43

Well, I finally got something good done. I posted a PKGBUILD in the AUR under the name "wakka", if you have any issues please, please, let me know!

Link: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=47037

Thanks!

Mitch

SanskritFritz · 2011-03-02 01:38:48

I like it, thanks! Please keep up the good work!

pablokal · 2011-03-02 13:05:37

The program isn't started doing wakka in terminal.

root@archbang paul]# wakka
bash: wakka: command not found

Doing this the program starts

[root@archbang paul]# python2 /usr/lib/wakka/wakka-package-manager
Data path: /usr/lib/wakka/data/
Language support path: data/locale/
Pacman version : ['3', '4', '3']

And wakka is present in usr/local/bin and having the right permissions.

Last edited by pablokal (2011-03-02 13:23:22)

minasmorath · 2011-03-02 18:00:13

pablokal wrote:

The program isn't started doing wakka in terminal.
root@archbang paul]# wakka
bash: wakka: command not found

Doing this the program starts
[root@archbang paul]# python2 /usr/lib/wakka/wakka-package-manager
Data path: /usr/lib/wakka/data/
Language support path: data/locale/
Pacman version : ['3', '4', '3']
And wakka is present in usr/local/bin and having the right permissions.

This is probably because /usr/local/bin/ is not in your $PATH.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that most users don't put /usr/local/bin/ in their $PATH, I've changed the pkgbuild and install routines to put the launcher in /usr/bin/ instead. I made a bad assumption there, my mistake.

pablokal · 2011-03-03 11:57:42

But is is in my $PATH
in my etc/profile will find
# Set our default path
PATH="/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:usr/local/bin"
export PATH

Reinstalling solved the issue though.

Still no size and no open terminal by default when installing or deinstalling.

Last edited by pablokal (2011-03-03 12:32:40)

minasmorath · 2011-03-03 19:10:41

pablokal wrote:

But is is in my $PATH
in my etc/profile will find
# Set our default path
PATH="/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:usr/local/bin"
export PATH

You are missing the first forwardslash. "usr/local/bin" should be "/usr/local/bin".

pablokal wrote:

Reinstalling solved the issue though.

That is because the new launcher location is /usr/bin, which is correctly listed in your $PATH.

pablokal wrote:

Still no size and no open terminal by default when installing or deinstalling.

I'm working on packaging the latest build, it should be up in a couple days maximum.

tenlegger · 2011-03-03 21:47:02

Just installed wakka from AUR, taken it for a spin for 10 minutes and it's just what I've been looking for.

Nice!

Thank you and keep up the good work

Regards .....

Arch Linux

#1 2011-02-25 06:31:38

[ABANDONED][Project] Wakka: A Gtk-Based Package Management Tool

#2 2011-02-25 07:48:35

Re: [ABANDONED][Project] Wakka: A Gtk-Based Package Management Tool

#3 2011-02-25 09:12:38

Re: [ABANDONED][Project] Wakka: A Gtk-Based Package Management Tool

#4 2011-02-25 16:19:11

Re: [ABANDONED][Project] Wakka: A Gtk-Based Package Management Tool

#5 2011-02-25 18:43:34

Re: [ABANDONED][Project] Wakka: A Gtk-Based Package Management Tool

#6 2011-02-25 19:21:02

Re: [ABANDONED][Project] Wakka: A Gtk-Based Package Management Tool

#7 2011-02-25 20:21:21

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#8 2011-02-26 09:03:44

Re: [ABANDONED][Project] Wakka: A Gtk-Based Package Management Tool

#9 2011-02-26 11:06:14

Re: [ABANDONED][Project] Wakka: A Gtk-Based Package Management Tool

#10 2011-02-26 14:22:00

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#25 2011-03-03 21:47:02

Re: [ABANDONED][Project] Wakka: A Gtk-Based Package Management Tool

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