Packaging Help

[Aradalf]

I would like to get started with packaging, but I don't know where to begin. Have searched for topics such as "Packaging guide", "How to Package", and "Packaging how-to", but all I found were posts that reference nonexistent threads. How can I get started?

[Neal ManBear]

http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201007/page15.html

It is a bit out of date, but the basics are in this tutorial.
http://nbrks.com/rpm/Build_RPMs.odt

Note that the set up is now done using pkgutils. Install pkgutils for kde or pkgutils-thunar and as user run the command mkrepo which will take you through the set up of your packaging environment.

[Aradalf]

http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201007/page15.html

It is a bit out of date, but the basics are in this tutorial.
http://nbrks.com/rpm/Build_RPMs.odt

Note that the set up is now done using pkgutils. Install pkgutils for kde or pkgutils-thunar and as user run the command mkrepo which will take you through the set up of your packaging environment.

Is there one for LXDE or pcmanfm?

[Neal ManBear]

http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201007/page15.html

It is a bit out of date, but the basics are in this tutorial.
http://nbrks.com/rpm/Build_RPMs.odt

Note that the set up is now done using pkgutils. Install pkgutils for kde or pkgutils-thunar and as user run the command mkrepo which will take you through the set up of your packaging environment.

Is there one for LXDE or pcmanfm?

I use pkgutils-thunar in LXDE. Perhaps a pkgutils for PCManFM can be created in the future.

[MBantz]

Good luck to Aradalf :-) Welcome to the packaging pack ;-)

Actually I did look at PCmanFM for packaging, but at that time they were up for a total rewrite - and today still have little to none documentation (at least what I can find).

On the other hand I have been looking thoughtfully at Nautilus - and this filemanager seem to have it all - and I mean -all-: mime types, icons for mime types and all the cool stuff. If more (than me) would like Nautilus to be 'packaging enabled' let me know and I'll look at it. The documentation is very fine: http://www.nautilus-actions.org/?q=node/377

for now I also use the thunar version I created some time ago, still seem quite effective and have the necessary functions, but do let me know if anything should be added to the thunar package,

cheers,
MBantz

[Dragynn]

Good luck to Aradalf :-) Welcome to the packaging pack ;-)

Actually I did look at PCmanFM for packaging, but at that time they were up for a total rewrite - and today still have little to none documentation (at least what I can find).

On the other hand I have been looking thoughtfully at Nautilus - and this filemanager seem to have it all - and I mean -all-: mime types, icons for mime types and all the cool stuff. If more (than me) would like Nautilus to be 'packaging enabled' let me know and I'll look at it. The documentation is very fine: http://www.nautilus-actions.org/?q=node/377

for now I also use the thunar version I created some time ago, still seem quite effective and have the necessary functions, but do let me know if anything should be added to the thunar package,

cheers,
MBantz

I would be interested in this, i'm on Gnome-Zen using nautilus, and thought I might like to begin to learn to package, if a version of pkgutils can be made for nautilus, i'll give it a go.

[MBantz]

Good luck to Aradalf :-) Welcome to the packaging pack ;-)

Actually I did look at PCmanFM for packaging, but at that time they were up for a total rewrite - and today still have little to none documentation (at least what I can find).

On the other hand I have been looking thoughtfully at Nautilus - and this filemanager seem to have it all - and I mean -all-: mime types, icons for mime types and all the cool stuff. If more (than me) would like Nautilus to be 'packaging enabled' let me know and I'll look at it. The documentation is very fine: http://www.nautilus-actions.org/?q=node/377

for now I also use the thunar version I created some time ago, still seem quite effective and have the necessary functions, but do let me know if anything should be added to the thunar package,

cheers,
MBantz

I would be interested in this, i'm on Gnome-Zen using nautilus, and thought I might like to begin to learn to package, if a version of pkgutils can be made for nautilus, i'll give it a go.

Yes, I'm also using Gnome-Zen - only - and made the pkgutils package for thunar. I can only recommend you to start packaging using Thunar, Nautilus will, when developed, have the exact same functions. It will take me a month or so to create a Nautilus packaging interface I guess - and I'm working on another, rather big, project so it can take some time until we have a Nautilus interface,

just install thunar and pkgutils-thunar in a zen-VM and you're good to go :-)

cheers,
MBantz

[Dragynn]

Good luck to Aradalf :-) Welcome to the packaging pack ;-)

Actually I did look at PCmanFM for packaging, but at that time they were up for a total rewrite - and today still have little to none documentation (at least what I can find).

On the other hand I have been looking thoughtfully at Nautilus - and this filemanager seem to have it all - and I mean -all-: mime types, icons for mime types and all the cool stuff. If more (than me) would like Nautilus to be 'packaging enabled' let me know and I'll look at it. The documentation is very fine: http://www.nautilus-actions.org/?q=node/377

for now I also use the thunar version I created some time ago, still seem quite effective and have the necessary functions, but do let me know if anything should be added to the thunar package,

cheers,
MBantz

I would be interested in this, i'm on Gnome-Zen using nautilus, and thought I might like to begin to learn to package, if a version of pkgutils can be made for nautilus, i'll give it a go.

Yes, I'm also using Gnome-Zen - only - and made the pkgutils package for thunar. I can only recommend you to start packaging using Thunar, Nautilus will, when developed, have the exact same functions. It will take me a month or so to create a Nautilus packaging interface I guess - and I'm working on another, rather big, project so it can take some time until we have a Nautilus interface,

just install thunar and pkgutils-thunar in a zen-VM and you're good to go :-)

cheers,
MBantz

Oh no hurry Mbantz, I was just mainly responding to let you know there was at least one other person that had some interest in it, and thanks in advance for your efforts!

Just a quick noob question (probably already gives one shudders to think of a noob attempting packaging to start with, especially with the dumb question i'm about to ask ), but regarding thunar and pkgutils +zen-vm, do you mean running a second install of Zen inside a VM on my current box and installing thunar and pkgutils on it? And also, I have almost no experience using VM's, so which one would you recommend? (Neal or anyone else reading this thread feel free to post any other recs as well, i'll take all the data I can get).

[MBantz]

Good luck to Aradalf :-) Welcome to the packaging pack ;-)

Actually I did look at PCmanFM for packaging, but at that time they were up for a total rewrite - and today still have little to none documentation (at least what I can find).

On the other hand I have been looking thoughtfully at Nautilus - and this filemanager seem to have it all - and I mean -all-: mime types, icons for mime types and all the cool stuff. If more (than me) would like Nautilus to be 'packaging enabled' let me know and I'll look at it. The documentation is very fine: http://www.nautilus-actions.org/?q=node/377

for now I also use the thunar version I created some time ago, still seem quite effective and have the necessary functions, but do let me know if anything should be added to the thunar package,

cheers,
MBantz

I would be interested in this, i'm on Gnome-Zen using nautilus, and thought I might like to begin to learn to package, if a version of pkgutils can be made for nautilus, i'll give it a go.

Yes, I'm also using Gnome-Zen - only - and made the pkgutils package for thunar. I can only recommend you to start packaging using Thunar, Nautilus will, when developed, have the exact same functions. It will take me a month or so to create a Nautilus packaging interface I guess - and I'm working on another, rather big, project so it can take some time until we have a Nautilus interface,

just install thunar and pkgutils-thunar in a zen-VM and you're good to go :-)

cheers,
MBantz

Oh no hurry Mbantz, I was just mainly responding to let you know there was at least one other person that had some interest in it, and thanks in advance for your efforts!

Just a quick noob question (probably already gives one shudders to think of a noob attempting packaging to start with, especially with the dumb question i'm about to ask ), but regarding thunar and pkgutils +zen-vm, do you mean running a second install of Zen inside a VM on my current box and installing thunar and pkgutils on it? And also, I have almost no experience using VM's, so which one would you recommend? (Neal or anyone else reading this thread feel free to post any other recs as well, i'll take all the data I can get).

Oh yes, I can recommend a VM or a separate 'build-system'. On my day-to-day system (Zen) I have a 40 gb Virtual Machine also running Zen (and pkgutils) and use this for packaging. You will quickly end up with a lot of development packages installed, and once in a while (every 6 months or so) I reinstall it. A regularly cleanup also make your build better (long explanation here if you want :-). Actually after I create the Virtual machine and install Zen, I just take a backup of the folder with the vmware files for a later fresh restore.

It will take an evening or so to create your first VM - I recommend VMWare, everything is working great for packaging. There is an not-entirely-up-to-date-but-useful description here I still use when creating new VM's: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,55194.0.html

Eventually start out by updating existing source rpms (you will find them here: http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2010/ (the folders starting with srpms) suggested in package suggest - and later pull in srpms from other distros (just use google) and finally sometimes it's necessary to build your own srpm from scratch,

and remember to just ask away - lots of questions on the first packages :-)

cheers,
MBantz

[Dragynn]

Well shoot, space is gonna be the rub doing that on my main machine, HD is pretty full up with two OS'es and a truckload of media files.

But as an alternative, I do have an older laptop, a PIII with 512mb of ram, I have already managed to install Zen mini on it, but was thinking of switching it to Neal's new LXDE mini to make it a little easier on the ol dog anyway, and it has a 120 gig drive I snagged out of a newer unit, with nothing right now on it but the OS. Would this be acceptable for packaging?

And secondly, I believe LXDE comes with PCmanFM, would I just install Thunar as an alternate FS and make it the default somehow, then load pkgutils-thunar and run it like that? Seems like that might be a great solution for me to get some good use out of the old lappy, and since I now have my whole system fully networked on PCLOS machines, I could easily share files amongst them in case I needed some extra files or storage or whatever.

Thanks again for being patient with the questions and sharing all the great info, it will be an excellent learning experience for me and a great skill to have, and i'll definitely use it to benefit the community here.