Gentoo/portage programming challenge

Elsipkitch9809 · Apprentice Joined: 21 Jul 2002 Posts: 186

Hola everyone!

I was just recently asked by a good friend of mine (more like challenged, but anyway

) to make an easy and intuitive user interface to the portage system. I know, "emerge <app>" is easy enough, but from what he suggested it would be more than just that.

Things like merging, upgrading, unmerging, downloading only source, using install packages (all things from the emerge command and more), as well as having a listing of all the apps you emerged so far, editing USE variables easily (I think the gentoolkit does this, I don't know), and maybe a listing (after an emerge sync) that lists all the ebuilds available, descriptions, dependencies, and whether its installed or not, etc..

After thinking about this for a bit, I think it would be a good idea, and probably not that hard to implement (it could probably be done easily in wxpython), as well as it may help to rope in new users to gentoo

And besides, I think I need some kind of GUI project to get experience with, as I have some of my own things I need to practice for. One thing I thought at first might be a tough challenge is the need for root access without sudoing. I know that mandrake has a installer system where it pops up a window asking for root access, then runs the app with no need for using cli.

I know that this probably won't be the most popular idea, as a lot of you probably have no need for a gui for it (including myself). But it would be nice for some users to have this option I think (and gentoo is about options about what you want to install and use right?). Anyway, I wanted to get some input on it if anyone wants to talk about it.

dufnutz · Apprentice Joined: 01 May 2002 Posts: 209

have you seen kportage?

guero61 · l33t Joined: 14 Oct 2002 Posts: 811 Location: Behind you

I concur: kportage is the best GUI portage frontend I've seen. I also tried kemerge, but kportage just works better, looks better, and will even take my dog on a walk. (Okay, maybe not, but at least it covers everything you requested here and more. Give it a whirl!)

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

I think a non-KDE version would be great. I don't think there is one for Gnome yet either.
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Elsipkitch9809 · Apprentice Joined: 21 Jul 2002 Posts: 186

Wow, Kportage does look nice!

Okay, I didn't know this had already been done. Like kanuslupus said though, a non KDE version might be nice (I use gnome2 myself), but then again, I'm not sure I'd be able to make one as good as this looks (I will emerge it tonight and test it out when I get back home). I was thinking wxpython, which I believe uses the GTK version of wxwindows (hence it would be a gnome app I guess

).

I'm still interested in making one, though, if maybe just for getting GUI experience and giving something out to those gnome fanatics (like myself :lol:

)--would anyone want to maybe start a project together on it?

Thanks again

guero61 · l33t Joined: 14 Oct 2002 Posts: 811 Location: Behind you

Not sure, but there should be some other ones hanging around that aren't tied to the KDE bloat. (I can say that since it's the only Linux desktop I use... I'm just a sucker for pain.) Take a potshot at portagemaster, see where that lands ya.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

Has anyone actually used portagemaster? I have this vision of a one-legged dog crawling up Everest.
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guero61 · l33t Joined: 14 Oct 2002 Posts: 811 Location: Behind you

Can't say I have; just thought I'd save him the legwork. Is it that bad?

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

Not at all, I was just curious (but not enough to emerge it).
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tweakt · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2003 10:12 pm Post subject:

Sorry to bump this thread from so long ago, but I was thinking adding GUI interface to emerge would be a really good idea.

Since portage is implemented in Python, it could easily be done in wxPython and integrated directly into portage. If you dont have X running, or don't have wxPython installed, then it's text only, or you could pass "--nogui" to force, etc... if $DISPLAY is set, and the libs it needs are present, it would go GUI by default.

I really don't think standalone apps are really the right approach to interface with portage. I think portagemaster relied on actually parsing the output of emerge, any other method of parsing the portage tree is just duplicating effort when all the code to do this exists already.

If wxPython is really as good as I hear, it shouldn't be so hard to do. how many of you would be interested in taking this on as an unofficial project? We could maintain it as a patch to emerge.

shm · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 12:33 am Post subject:

shm · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 12:37 am Post subject:

Also there is this:

http://gnoportage.sourceforge.net/

but once again, kde bloat/java bloat versus gnome bloat =)

(and the fact that this project seems dead)
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Genone · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 1:05 am Post subject:

Please, before you start yet another GUI frontend try to improve existing ones, there are already half a dozen or so out (kportage being the most advanced AFAIK), although some of them aren't in the tree. Nothing against GUIs or new projects, but it doesn't help if we have a dozen non-working/abandoned projects out there and no good working one.

aethyr · Veteran Joined: 06 Apr 2003 Posts: 1085 Location: NYC

wow... almost a one year bump. I marvel at your searching abilities.

But in a feeble effort to keep this marginally on topic, I really fail to see the use for a graphical portage.

What would it possibilty enable you to do that you can't do quicker and easier from the command line?

GUI != better

The only thing I could picture would be some kind of USE-flag selection per-package that is stored locally. If you were to code something that did that, maybe it would be useful. But seriously, is it worth it?

If Gentoo users are afraid of the command line, I'm starting to become worried.

() · l33t Joined: 25 Nov 2002 Posts: 610

tweakt · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 12:26 pm Post subject:

My reasons for wanting a GUI are as follows:

Usability. Ever do an emerge -upvl world' ? Usually I have to re-run the command once for each package since so much information flies by. This involves startup processing, building dependencies, etc. each time, which leads me to #2:

Efficiency/speed. When doing a an emerge -p, you notice a ton of deps you don't really want built. So you go back and tweak your USE flag, then re-run emerge -p to see the new list. Imagine from the GUI if you could see this in real time. You select a package you want to merge, then remove the USE flags and the dependencies update.

A good example is merging kportage. I didn't have any KDE stuff, so removing +doc dropped about 4 extra packages it would have built. But normally I want docs. For that one build I could have excluded that USE flag without too much effort.

In theory this would be much faster because what I want to do is a complete implementation of the emerge command with a GUI attached, not simply a front end. So the dependency tree won't need to get rebuild so often.

And one thing that I haven't seen any of these apps do, is simply show me what 'emerge -up system' would. That's the most important thing. Keeping your system up to date. Oh, and while I'm at it, a GUI etc-update would rock. Yes, I know how to merge files, the current system works, but it's not very intuitive, and I'm sure this is where a lot of folks get hung up. In a jam they probably just overwrite their changes.

I'll start by hacking on gportage for a bit, it looks like it's headed in the right direction.

carambola5 · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jul 2002 Posts: 214

What about the Portage Website? It's a very good idea though requires apache+php. Of course, it's still in its development stages, so it doesn't actually have the ability to execute emerge statements.