Portato - A Portage GUI

[Necoro]

Looking for help

Hello folks,
I'm proud to announce you (yet another) GUI for our lovely portage-system: Portato.

The current version of this package is 0.14.1 - the package can be found here: http://necoro.eu/portato

But some more details about what it exactly is, what it is not and how it works:

Portato is planned to help the user in situations where the command line is insufficient: For example when looking for a package, or when you want to see what packages are lying around in a category ... or when you have to install a greater package with lots of dependencies and even more use-flags. In this case you normally have to call "emerge -pv <pkg>" several times and edit package.use/package.keywords at the same time and have to see, what you are gaining. This is easier to handle with a graphical ui, because we have an Emerge Queue which updates automatically and shows dependencies. And you even can update USE-Flags on a per-package-base and the queue shows the changes.

Portato is not planned to replace the command line tools. Perhaps it might add some more gentoolkit-functions (like 'equery f') in the future, but it will not have a clickable interface for make.conf. Or it will be necessairy to check the files in /etc/portage regularly, because the software can not emulate a human brain . And of course is the "emerge <small_package>" faster (if you have already a terminal opened) than opening Portato and do several clicks.

But what is so special about Portato? What is the difference to the other GUIs?
First a remark: To be honest, I have only tested kuroo so far - and this only for a short period of time. It may be, that some of the things I missed at that time, are fixed

Nevertheless, some points:

• Portato is written in Python, which makes it more flexible than C. And it allows to directly use the Portage-API w/o having to parse output.
  
• Portato does not need to have an extra database. It uses the db of portage.
  
• It will not screw up you files in /etc/portage like removing you comments and structure (a point I hated about kuroo). If it has to remove a line in one of this files, it will simply comment it out, with the hint, that this line was removed by Portato. Same for adding.
  
• Uses GTK as the frontend.
  
• Some more things I forgot
  

At the moment (v.0.14.1) the following things do work:

• Listing categories and the packages in them.
  
• Searching for a package.
  
• Listing details for packages.
  
• Setting use-flags.
  
• Emerge/Re-emerge/Un-emerge.
  
• Emerge --oneshot
  
• Interactive emerges (thus: emerges requiring user input)
  
• Masking / Unmasking / Keywording package (even a whole queue)
  
• Interactive searching
  
• Dialog showing updatable packages
  
• Do an emerge --sync
  
• Do an update [--deep] [--newuse] --world
  
• Ability to stop the emerge process
  
• Showing the ebuild with syntax highlighting
  
• Plugin system
  
• Systray and Desktop Entries
  

And in the end:
I am happy, if some of you think, that this might be worth a try and send me some remarks, bugs or whatever

Thanks for reading
Necoro
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[baeksu]

I'll certainly give it a try. Don't get discouraged by all the people who will comment on this thread saying there's no need for yet another portage gui. Choice is always good, and if doing this project gives you pleasure, go right ahead.
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[Necoro]

I got a bug report, that masked packages cannot be emerged (or better: Genetic/One prints an error to the console)...

I just want to emphasize: Handling masking (either by package.mask or by keyword) DOES NOT work at the moment ... but I'll open an error popup instead just ignoring it
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[Necoro]

New release: 0.3.2

Changelog:

• restructured program files
  
• changed font in terminal (due to a strange behavior of 'm' in the current font)
  
• added new dialog warning when we cannot emerge a masked program
  
• using debug() instead of print
  
• fixing small bugs
  

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[Necoro]

To make it easier to get the ebuilds and emerge Genetic/One, i have built an overlay

It can be found under: https://svn.sf.net/svnroot/geneticone/overlay

Additionally I made it accessible by layman:

[masterdriverz]

[Necoro]

[masterdriverz]

[Necoro]

Ooops ... sorry ...

For your problem: try

[masterdriverz]

Ah, that fixed it. Thanks.

[Necoro]

Hmmm ... why didnt anyone say anything: the unmerge did not work ... that's why i had to make a new revision:

0.3.3
- Unmerge does work now
- Lots faster, due to better portage-calls (thx @porthole for the inspiration )
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[Necoro]

Ok ... after working a lil' bit on it, I can finally announce version 0.4.0

Features:
- unmasking/masking/keywording
- unmasking/keywording a queue: i.e. unmasking/keywording a package and all its dependencies (if needed)
- preference window:
* allowing to set the name to choose for package.*-files if they are dirs (incl placeholders for category and package name)
* allowing to set, wheter packages are added by version ("=cat/pkg-ver") or by package ("cat/pkg")
* switch debug messages on/off
- if the keyword is set for a testing package, the label changes from "Testing" to "(Testing)" allowing a better differentiation between testing but keyworded packages and stable packages

Hints:
- the preference window is pretty ugly atm - will change it in the future
- there are (of course) bugs left - I've seen some of them but was not able to reproduce them - please file them if you see one (either here - or better: in the bugtracking system of the sf.net-project-page: http://www.sf.net/projects/geneticone )

So far,
Necoro
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[Dun]

If I could make a suggestion, I will ask to try to optimize the size of the application for resolution like 1280x800 or anything with height ~800 I cant resize it due to higher app's width

[masterdriverz]

Is there a reason why you keep revbumping the SVN ebuild? The whole point of it being there is so that you don't revbump it, you use snapshots for that instead.
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Solutions to misc kde problems

[Necoro]

I revdump the ebuild if I change anything in it. Like the USE-Flag I added... And I cannot see a reason why not to do so - if there is a downside of this method, tell me - so that I might change it.
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[Necoro]

ouh ... I completely missed Dun's post ...

So here is the solution: I fixed this problem in the SVN-version ... the min height for all people taking <=800 is set to 600 (and in the current svn the app is much smaller due to a redesign )
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[masterdriverz]

[Necoro]

OK ... *lesson learned* ... I'll fix it the next time I have to update the svn-ebuild
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[masterdriverz]

[Necoro]

So ... short remark:

I built in "emerge --sync" and a first basic version of "emerge --update world". This basic version is not able to handle "--deep" and "--newuse" (these might follow in the next days).
Hint:
"Update world" will only display the packages to update - you have to do an extra "emerge" to get the update done.

(This feature is only available in svn, at the momen)
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[Necoro]

Me again:

I made "--deep" working, too (though it is slower than emerge). You can enable it under "Preferences" ...

And because I was not able to test it thoroughly (there aren't so many updates =P), I ask you for helping me and testing whether the update in the GUI (with and without "--deep") is bringing the same results as a "emerge --update (--deep) --pretend world" in the console Thank You
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[Necoro]

New release: 0.4.5

New Features:
- update world and update --deep world
- emerge --sync
- allowing marking a package as "oneshot"


Additionally I'm currently looking for someone who wants to build a Qt-Frontend and someone with design (and gtk) abilities to redesign the current GUI in a more pleasent way, as my own design abilities are below 0

So far,
Necoro
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[Necoro]

New release: 0.5.0

Features:
- rewrite of the GUI: now using Glade and being nicier ^^
- allowing "--newuse" with "update world"

And a Qt-GUI is coming perhaps, as Klaus Meier said he his willing to try writing one
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[drizzt]

Is Geneticone broken by portage ?
I used geneticone ebuild 9999 for the last couple of days, but it suddenly stopped working. I can't emerge anything. It complains about something in python/portage about missing symbols. Rebuild didn't work either this complains about:

[Necoro]

My fault ... (in two manners)

First I forgot to announce here, that Genetic/One is renamed to Portato. (so: please uninstall geneticone and take portato instead). Atm I am waiting for sf.net to rename the project...

Second: I changed everything in the sourcecode - and forgot to update the ebuilds -.-
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