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Re: gdselect alpha 3 [libapt]



On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Lalo Martins wrote:
> On Nov 21, Havoc Pennington decided to present us with:
> >
> >  - there are little resizable windows for package description/information,
> >    but they are empty
> 
> Havoc, are you working on this? If you want to concentrate on
> the dselect-like tree portion, I wouldn't mind taking over that
> part. I have some neat ideas about it. My vision is a
> GNOME/CORBA widget "gdeb" or something, that:
> 
> - is built with a string block and a callback. The string block
>   contains the control headers, which should be enought for most
>   uses. The callback can be used to query the calling
>   application for the actual .deb, in case the user requests
>   something like "dpkg-deb -c" or something from control.tar.gz
> 
> - if the callback is null, it assumes that the actual .deb is
>   somehow unreacheable
> 
> - if the .deb is reacheable, I'm thinking of adding a button to
>   install it (with "dpkg -i", not apt, I think). <ramblings> If
>   not running as root, it could prompt for the root password and
>   then use it to "su". </ramblings> Also, a switch to omit this
>   button could be added to the widget creation function, so for
>   example if your tree widget already has an install button it
>   may be redundant to have one in the gdeb widget.
> 
> - a "gdeb" binary would also come with the widget package. It
>   simply accepts a .deb in the command line and builds a gdeb
>   widget for it in the main window. It's meant, for example, to
>   be associated with .deb files in .mailcap's and file managers.
> 

(I'm not trimming the quotes since the list hasn't read your mail.)

This sounds like overkill for gnome-apt. All I need is a routine:

stuff_info_on_this_deb_in_text_widget(GtkText* text,
                                      SomeKindOfHandle* package);

For now we can just stuff the raw text, eventually it can stuff it and
also set some bold and color styles so things look nice.

The main thing I need to know is how to get SomeKindOfHandle and how to
get from that to the string to stuff, Jason said he was working on this. 
I assume it will be in apt-pkg so you could also use it in a 'gdeb'
program (which does sound like a good idea). 

> The only catch is that I currently don't have the resources to
> fetch and build the latest GNOME from CVS, so I will do this
> with the Debian packages I have available:
> 
> libgnome-dev_0.30.1-2.deb
> libgnome0_0.30.1-2.deb
> libgtk1.1-dev_1.1.2-2.deb
> libgtk1.1_1.1.2-2.deb
> liborbit-dev_0.3.0-1.deb
> liborbit0_0.3.0-1.deb
> 
> For as little as I know about GNOME/ORBit widgets, this
> shouldn't be a problem, should it?
>

Yeah, it's a problem. These packages are really old given the rate of
Gnome development. I'd say wait for the Gnome/Gtk feature freeze around
Dec 15, there should be a stable-interface beta release sometime soon
after that.

For development it's nice to build your own anyway, because the packages
are usually build with --enable-debug=no, which basically turns off Gtk's
internal assertions and runtime type checking - speeding apps up a good
bit, but significantly increasing your debugging time. 
 
> If you think I'm in the right track, feel free to bounce this
> message to deity@lists.debian.org, reply me with a "go ahead"
> (if you reply in the list, please CC me because I seem to be
> having some kind of problem with the digests) and suggest
> changes/additions/whatever.
> 

As I said a 'gdeb' program to just view and optionally install a .deb file
sounds like a nice idea; but all I need for gnome-apt is the above
get-text-and-stuff-it-in-widget routine.

Havoc



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