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#26 2005-06-27 00:47:58

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Oh, I should have mentioned that the screenshots have been updated to reflect the changes that have happened subsequently. Nothing too major, just that Install and Remove dialogs have an additional panel for the more advanced pacman options.

http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/andyr/software/jacman/

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#27 2005-06-27 06:27:39

jftaylor21
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From: Arch Linux Forums
Registered: 2004-02-21
Posts: 237

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Really nice. I appreciate the work done here. I like how it shows the complete dependency tree for a package when you click on it. It would be nice to be able to browse by category though. Maybe if you added more filters on the side for each category. Keep up the good work!

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#28 2005-06-27 07:15:32

glitz
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Registered: 2005-06-15
Posts: 19

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Wow!  Looks very, very nice.  I didn't even know Java applications could look this good smile

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#29 2005-06-27 07:48:21

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

jftaylor21 wrote:

Maybe if you added more filters on the side for each category. Keep up the good work!

That had occurred to me. The reason why I haven't done this is because the category data isn't included in the local copy of the package DB (as far as I can see). It only appears to exist on the packages website. If anyone knows of a where to find the package category without having to query the website I'd be most grateful.

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#30 2005-06-27 08:13:23

cactus
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From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰
Registered: 2004-05-25
Posts: 4,622
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

pacman doesn't really deal with package categories, only repositories.


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#31 2005-06-27 09:31:32

iphitus
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From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Looks great!

Is it possible to make it use GTK like other java apps such as Azureus?

And another request, hide the main menu once i've clicked an option orrrr tab the Install/Remove/Update. You wouldnt need to at any stage perform more than one of those main menu actions, so leaving it open seems a bit pointless.

Good work!

iphitus


edit: just found a bug
https://iphitus.no-ip.org/jacman.png

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#32 2005-06-27 09:37:09

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

cactus wrote:

pacman doesn't really deal with package categories, only repositories.

That's what I thought. It does strike me as odd that the online package db and the AUR use these categories but the packages themselves have no record. I do think it would be handy.

Therefore, whilst the category information only exists on the server, it's unlikely to be integrated into Jacman in the short term. I'd have to query the website for each package. Admittedly, I could Jacman to cache the results for speedy lookups for subsequent runs. It's a handy feature but a lot of leg work for both the dev (implementation time) and the user (query time)

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#33 2005-06-27 09:44:41

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

iphitus wrote:

Looks great!

Is it possible to make it use GTK like other java apps such as Azureus?

It's possible, but Azureus uses SWT which calls GTK widgets natively. SWT and Java's GUI toolkit, Swing, are completely different in structure and usage. I have no experience of SWT and therefore cannot port it to other toolkits. I probably wouldn't want to, since I'm happy with Swing.

Besides, the next release of Java will actually use GTK also to draw widgets for the GTK look and feel. So, I should get GTK for free in a while smile

And another request, hide the main menu once i've clicked an option orrrr tab the Install/Remove/Update. You wouldnt need to at any stage perform more than one of those main menu actions, so leaving it open seems a bit pointless.

This was my original design, but then I somehow convinced myself that people would expect to see the main menu again. What I will do is implement a property that when true, will close immediate, otherwise it'll show the main menu. The default will be true but the user can specify in the options.

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#34 2005-06-27 09:57:15

iphitus
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From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

arooaroo wrote:

This was my original design, but then I somehow convinced myself that people would expect to see the main menu again. What I will do is implement a property that when true, will close immediate, otherwise it'll show the main menu. The default will be true but the user can specify in the options.

awesome,

btw, i edited in a bug i caught into my post above before you replied.

And i'll do everything I can to get this included on the Archie LiveCD for 0.5!!

Archie 0.5 is going to be something awesome for Arch Linux.....

iphitus

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#35 2005-06-27 10:00:40

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

iphitus wrote:

404 sad

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#36 2005-06-27 10:14:58

iphitus
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From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

oops, forgot to mount my server's samba share, try now.

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#37 2005-06-27 10:38:53

Dreameen
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From: Poland
Registered: 2004-09-06
Posts: 252

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Here's how an update looks like:

200506271234281024x768scrot7jt.th.png

Just a minor annoyance.

Other than that, the app looks really nice and I'm sure many users will be happy to use it. smile

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#38 2005-06-27 10:55:49

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Dreameen wrote:

Here's how an update looks like:

200506271234281024x768scrot7jt.th.png

Just a minor annoyance.

Other than that, the app looks really nice and I'm sure many users will be happy to use it. smile

This is a known issue stated in the Readme. The console can't cope with curses-based output. It does look untidy I admit. I'll look into it to see if I can think of a work around. (it'll no doubt be a bit of a hack though!)

Ta

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#39 2005-06-27 11:49:26

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

iphitus,

I've been playing around and I've currently got the following set up wrt hiding the main frame.

When the user selects an option (e.g, Install package) the main window is hidden. If the user only browses the packages or whatever, and selects "Close", the Install dialog will obviously close, and the main frame will reappear.  If the user actually clicked the "Install" button, and pacman was invoked, then when the processing is complete, and the user selects "Done", the app will shutdown completely.

This is a little more flexible. I'm not sure you'd want the entire app to close unless you've invoked pacman. Let me know what you think.

Oh, I should have mentioned that there is an option that allows the dispose to be toggled on or off. The default is true which means the apps exits once pacman is complete.

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#40 2005-06-27 12:09:56

iphitus
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From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

cool.... and that bug in the screenie?

https://iphitus.no-ip.org/jacman.png

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#41 2005-06-27 12:31:15

T-Dawg
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From: Charlotte, NC
Registered: 2005-01-29
Posts: 2,736

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

arooaroo,

Is there any way I can twist your paw to create a repo folder with a gensynced db so I can add you to my pacman.conf?
It would be easier for us to stay on top of your updates...

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#42 2005-06-27 14:14:38

sudman1
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From: Huntingdon, UK
Registered: 2005-02-18
Posts: 143

Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

arooaroo wrote:
Dreameen wrote:

Here's how an update looks like:

200506271234281024x768scrot7jt.th.png

Just a minor annoyance.

Other than that, the app looks really nice and I'm sure many users will be happy to use it. smile

This is a known issue stated in the Readme. The console can't cope with curses-based output. It does look untidy I admit. I'll look into it to see if I can think of a work around. (it'll no doubt be a bit of a hack though!)

Ta

Arooaroo, I think Ive got a solution on this issue.  I'll sort the details and get you some code after work.  It seems like an easy fix.


v/r
Suds

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#43 2005-06-27 14:26:46

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

iphitus wrote:

and that bug in the screenie?

I replied to it earlier! (see ~5 posts above) As you can see, Sudman thinks he's got a nice fix - so I'll wait on his suggestions. I'm using a class that Sudman wrote for executing native programs within Java, and so he probably has a better fix than the hack that I've dreamed up.

Basically, the problem is that when you start a native process, you get an output stream from the app. With curses based apps, they are constantly churning out data, but using tricks to overwrite existing lines on the console. But we don't see it like that from within the stream. The current code just keeps displaying each line as it gets it. I'd go about solving this by checking if the current line is similar to the previous (ie., contains the same packge name) and if so, don't simply append an entire new line. Instead, overwrite the old line with the new one. And so on.

I think this will get sorted one way or another soon smile

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#44 2005-06-27 14:38:25

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Penguin wrote:

arooaroo,

Is there any way I can twist your paw to create a repo folder with a gensynced db so I can add you to my pacman.conf?
It would be easier for us to stay on top of your updates...

I thought Arch was moving away from personal repos.

I must admit, I'm not terribly inclined, at the moment at least. sad It's not a bad idea of course. Time is already precious and to have to learn how to setup and maintain a repo would eat into Jacman dev time. I won't be doing lots and lots of mini-updates though. It'll be probably be a little while before v0.2 comes out with some substantial improvements.

If anyone else wishes to add it to their repo, then feel free.

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#45 2005-06-27 14:39:25

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

What you really want to do there is capture the output and use a progressbar to show how much of the download is complete.

Just to make things interesting. :-)

Dusty

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#46 2005-06-27 14:48:50

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

I don't forsee any other progress bars than Pacman's own ascii variety.

I like having the normal pacman output shown on a console. Mainly because it's less effort for me! I want pacman to do the hardwork of actually installing the packages, since Judd & co have gone to all that effort. It enforces how Jacman is truely a front-end to pacman, and not a re-implementation.

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#47 2005-06-27 14:54:20

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

arooaroo wrote:

I don't forsee any other progress bars than Pacman's own ascii variety.

I like having the normal pacman output shown on a console. Mainly because it's less effort for me! I want pacman to do the hardwork of actually installing the packages, since Judd & co have gone to all that effort. It enforces how Jacman is truely a front-end to pacman, and not a re-implementation.

It might also be useful for 'teaching' people the pacman commands so they can do it on the command-line too.

If and when the backend library is complete, I'm sure what you are doing would be much less hackish. For example, a well designed library would have a method you could poll to determine the amount of progress made.

As for personal repo, just leave it in aur for now. If it takes off, a TU will pick it up.  That's the best way, IMO. People can use an adaptation of my aurbuild script to automatically install it if they like.

Dusty

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#48 2005-06-27 15:15:33

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Dusty wrote:

It might also be useful for 'teaching' people the pacman commands so they can do it on the command-line too.

That's a good point. The console with Jacman when activated does show the user the exact command it passes to pacman, so they could learn in that respect.

If and when the backend library is complete, I'm sure what you are doing would be much less hackish. For example, a well designed library would have a method you could poll to determine the amount of progress made.

Indeed, I had been thinking about that. Although, whenever libpacman appears, it'll mean I need to learn about JNI!

As for personal repo, just leave it in aur for now. If it takes off, a TU will pick it up.  That's the best way, IMO. People can use an adaptation of my aurbuild script to automatically install it if they like.

That's what I like to hear! The less effort for me the better. No offense to the guys who wanted a repo. It took me long enough to construct the PKGBUILD, which is why the build() is so damn ugly. (Dusty, don't look!!) I guess people better get votin' big_smile

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#49 2005-06-27 16:04:58

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Hey man, I'll look at that PKGBUILD later and see if I can make it work better for you. Did you make any attempts to conform to the ever-changing java packaging standards?

I still haven't actually *used* jacman, so I shouldn't give too much advice. I'm actually very relieved to have it, because now I can let my sister use Arch. ;-)

As for JNI, you might need to learn C instead, hehehe.

There's also xerces2's libpypac interfac if you wanted to work in python. Python is better than Java. I say that all the time, but I don't think I believe it deep down...

Dusty

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#50 2005-06-27 17:04:39

arooaroo
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2005-01-13
Posts: 1,268
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Re: Jacman 0.1 - Java GUI front-end to pacman

Dusty wrote:

Hey man, I'll look at that PKGBUILD later and see if I can make it work better for you. Did you make any attempts to conform to the ever-changing java packaging standards?

Yep - I did try. I think it's ok with respect to your guidelines. Just an awkward routine to extract the internal jars and put them in /usr/share/java/jacman, and then re-jar the remaining classes and resources and put them in /usr/share/jacman. It would be cleaner if the source came in multiple files. A jar for each dep and then the core Jacman jar. I did use your Jedit PKGBUILD as a template mind.

I didn't think it was worth converting any of my deps to standalone packages.

Dusty wrote:

I still haven't actually *used* jacman, so I shouldn't give too much advice. I'm actually very relieved to have it, because now I can let my sister use Arch. ;-)

I don't use it either. That's not to say I don't like it! We recognise that there are different types of users. ArchLinux has typically appealed to those users comfortable with the command-line (which I am). But, I thought I'd get the ball-rolling on a decent GUI for those who perfer GUIs. To be honest, I expected a backlash from the core Archers on this project. Making the system more appealing to newbies seems to be a contencious issue of late.

Dusty wrote:

As for JNI, you might need to learn C instead, hehehe.

Dang! I'll dust off my C/C++ books then.

Dusty wrote:

There's also xerces2's libpypac interfac if you wanted to work in python. Python is better than Java. I say that all the time, but I don't think I believe it deep down...

Dusty

I like python and have used it quite a lot. My research is involves manipulating a lot of large text files containing written language, such as newspaper articles, books, reports, etc., and with python I find writing code to process these files a doddle. But, I'm not sure how easy it is to write complex GUIs in python. I expect it's easy to write simple GUIs and I also guess it depends on which toolkit you use.

Producing GUIs with Swing is hard to learn. But I've learnt a lot in the past year that I can knock them up quite quickly. I am now more comfortable with the flexibility that Swing offers.

In many ways, by being specific to ArchLinux, Java seems an odd choice as it's best suited to platform-independent projects. However, I still see an it's still cross-platformness across various processors as an advantage in light of the recent i586 and x64 ports of Arch. No need for recompiling Jacman smile

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