binary packages

[dbojan]

Hello.
What is the state of support for binary packages? It would take a long time to install, say xfce by compiling (for me)

Is there a plan to provide distribution version with xfce as wm?

I could not find third party installer script.

Tried to install MC (midnight commander) using compile, but it could not download source for MC. Probably old recipe? Can compile use some sort of version independent recipe?

It would be great if apt, or dnf, or pacman could be used.
Resolving binary dependencies, and moving files to correct folders, and symlinking them later.

Also is there support for appimage and flatpaks?

Thanks.

[nuc1eon]

What is the state of support for binary packages? It would take a long time to install, say xfce by compiling (for me).

Technically, binary packages are fully supported. But we do not offer a repo with pre-build packages atm.

Is there a plan to provide distribution version with xfce as wm?

Atm the plan is to stick to awesomewm. The xfce recipes would have to be brought into shape. PRs are very welcome.

I could not find third party installer script.

Please try this and report back whether it works: https://github.com/gobolinux/ThirdPartyInstallers
Personally I have never used it.

Tried to install MC (midnight commander) using compile, but it could not download source for MC. Probably old recipe?

Thanks for reporting, I'll look to bring our MC recipe up-to-date:)

Can compile use some sort of version independent recipe?

How would you imagine that to work?

Also is there support for appimage and flatpaks?

Appimages are supported, but no flatpacks atm. Alternatively you could use https://github.com/xplshn/dbin

[rubyFeedback]

Perhaps we could distribute a few binaries on github? For instance dbojan requested XFCE. I think
it should not be too difficult to just offer a single download for everything with the prefix:

/Programs/Xfce/ # or
/Programs/XFCE/ # should not matter either way as we can just rename either variant to the other

Then at the least dbojan's use case would be covered for now. I am not sure whether Nuc1eoN
would agree with this; evidently providing binaries for everything may be a bit much work
(e. g. all of KDE). If it works, though, and people have tested / tried it, it should be easy to
add this to any installer too. (KDE is actually quite a lot of work, XFCE is pretty lean and
minimal. mate-desktop is also somewhat small, compared to KDE. I am using mostly IceWM,
largely because it is fast and does not get into my way. I am fine with AwesomeWM too
though I prefer IceWM for several reasons. I think AwesomeWM was chosen mostly
due to lua-support, as hisham, lucas etc... like Lua.)

Tried to install MC (midnight commander) using compile, but it could not download source for MC. Probably old recipe?

MC tarballs can be found here:

https://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/midnightcommander/?C=M;O=D

Latest one is:

https://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/midnightcommander/mc-4.8.33.tar.xz

The GoboLinux MC recipes indeed appear to be a bit outdated:

https://github.com/gobolinux/Recipes/tree/master/MC

Latest one there is 4.8.25 though.

I had a look at the URL:

https://github.com/gobolinux/Recipes/blob/master/MC/4.8.25/Recipe

Indeed:

url="http://www.midnight-commander.org/downloads/mc-4.8.25.tar.xz"

You can probably try to update the recipe for now by yourself, using
just the URL:

https://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/midnightcommander/mc-4.8.33.tar.xz

Unfortunately I forgot how to do so myself; MakeRecipe? UpdateRecipe?
It should not be difficult because compiling mc is quite easy, when
ncurses works. I think now that it is known that you need an updated
version of mc, sooner or later I think mc will be updated. :)

(I could try, but I am waiting for the new gobo release; I am quite ok-ish
compiling stuff, but configuring linux is not so easy for me, e. g. grub
or the kernel; I managed to compile a kernel on slackware and it also
worked, but they used lilo which, despite not as advanced, was much
simpler than grub.)

Can compile use some sort of version independent recipe?

I think you mean so that a new release can be automatically updated?

Personally I think just updating the URL is easier, but I understand what
you mean if this is the case. I wrote some website parsers in ruby, primarily
for updating KDE, mate-desktop, xfce and gnome. These also work; that's
how I can manage updating this on my current non-gobolinux system (I
plan to adapt the code to gobolinux once it works; it used to work many
years ago, and I wrote it myself, so I understand my own code, so it is
just testing more of the old code again).

Writing a parser for websites is not so difficult. The way how my dumb scripts
do this, is by simply using wget mostly (or libcurl) to check for later named
program versions, e. g. if version is 1.2.0, then my scripts will check 1.2.1,
1.2.2, then 1.3.0, possibly 1.4.0, and then give up; this works well in about
99% of the use cases).

You could also give it a try if you have time and want to, to update the recipe
yourself and then contribute it. It may help people try out gobolinux more. :)

(Of course plan B is to automatically update every gobolinux package, even
though this may remove user's contributions, but some users don't have
time to tinker or don't want to, so we should indeed be able to offer the
latest versions of programs when possible. I'll try my luck first with KDE,
as I think GoboLinux being able to have a working KDE may interest more
people in GoboLinux.)

It would be great if apt, or dnf, or pacman could be used.

Understandable. Pacman was not so difficult to compile back when I tried it.
The source code should be here:

https://gitlab.archlinux.org/pacman/pacman

(Edit: We seem to not have any recipe for pacman yet:
https://github.com/gobolinux/Recipes/tree/master/Pacman
Guess we should try to see if we can compile it, perhaps some archlinux
users may also have a look at gobolinux if pacman would work. Though
I think it requires at the least one person who knows pacman fairly
well. I never set up a package with pacman, so I don't know its inner
workings.)

Setting it up may be a bit harder though. I don't know it very well myself,
although as GoboLinux also has compatibility symlinks, it may be easier
to use pacman actually. apt was recently rewritten I think, but depends on
perl. dnf I don't know much at all.

TL;DR: We should probably update the mc recipe.

[nuc1eon]

Hi @dbojan I have updated the MC recipe for you in gobolinux/Recipes@360f3a3

You should be able to get it installed now via sudo Compile MC. Make sure to install the Slang dependency when prompted.

I'd be happy for feedback.

[dbojan]

Thank you, I have tested Compiling MC, it works.
BR,