Comments on: GiftWrap helps you create .debs

By: Vadim

Vadim — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:30:43 +0000

@Gzorg: Depends if the software doesn’t use something that is missing in Hardy.

By: Gzorg

Gzorg — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:17:13 +0000

I create .deb on computer A with Jaunty. Can someone else use that .deb on computer B with Hardy?

By: Vadim

Vadim — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:18:30 +0000

It will be able to, but it doesn’t atm.

By: James

James — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:14:47 +0000

Nice app by the looks, I noticed its in ubuntu form. As I use lenny and sid, will this be packaged so debian users can use? I find some ubuntu packages dont work in debian, gwibber for one, as I have to use source for it to work nicely. I don’t mind compiling but…
Thanks for progressing with this, I’m sure there will be many grateful people out there.

By: DeepDayze

DeepDayze — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:19:28 +0000

Nice application, and will this app be able to produce packages that are high enough quality to upload to Debian and be accepted, if you wanted to submit a package to include in Debian?

By: Vadim

Vadim — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:51:39 +0000

No, it’s not a checkinstall wrapper – checkinstall generates rather poor quality. GiftWrap aims at helping you create the highest quality package (I should have clarified that).

You can specify dependencies in the ‘Options’ section – for the sake of a simple package, I skipped it. But it’s there.

I’ve worked with Qt (still do) and all I got was a dis-incentive to use it, sorry. Really horrible continued experience with the thing and Qt Designer made me leave it open for others to do.

Thanks though!

By: DeadFishMan

DeadFishMan — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:39:18 +0000

So it does basically what checkinstall does, right? I’ve been using it since forever in order to not leave files from manually compiled software packages scattered all over my hard drive as ‘make uninstall’ does not always work reliably (or at all, in some cases). GiftWrap looks like a nice wrapper for checkinstall, though.

I noticed that there was a missing dependency in the video and that the package managed to build successfully after the missing dependency was fixed but – unless I missed something – I did not see anywhere a way to specify dependencies for the created package (checkinstall has such feature) so it would be nice to have an additional field where one could enter them – manually or otherwise.

However, for a 0.1 release you went quite a length with your app. Congratulations! If you ever find the time/incentive to do a Qt version, you can count me in as I’d be glad to provide constructive feedback/beta testing, if needed.

By: Vadim

Vadim — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:11:29 +0000

@Parry: I was actually thinking of writing an article about that to get new developers started.

By: Stefano Forenza

Stefano Forenza — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:58:15 +0000

@Parry: I know the author of the program .

As for the developing question usually people use a combination of two programs:
- a text editor or ide for the language of choice (for python there’s Eric, Gedit, Eclipse, Wing Ide, Aptana and so on)
- glade for the interface design. If I ain’t wrong sudo apt-get install glade-3 should install it.

By: Parry

Parry — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:23:15 +0000

This is great, dude. How do you stay so up to date in the Linux world? Nice post.
Can you recommend me the place to start if I want to develop a GTK application using some IDE that offers me a kind of Visual Studio like solution?
Thanks

Parry