Jacman - v0.2 - README ====================== Andrew Roberts (dev [at] andy-roberts [dot] net) 25th July 2005 Overview ======== Jacman is a GUI frontend to the excellent pacman software management software that comes with the equally excellent ArchLinux. Hopefully the "J" makes it obvious that this is a Java application. Arch's philosophy is to keep things simple and to keep the user in control. Generally, GUI based configuration tools were deemed "anti-Arch" as they tended to contradict the philosophy by concealing functionality. Whilst developing Jacman, it has been a design goal to not break the philosophy. Whilst Jacman is only a front-end to pacman, it doesn't provide access to all of pacman's functionality, so there is still no replacement for the real thing :) However, there was a reason for that! I wanted Jacman to provide a visual window for only a subset of common tasks: installing, removing, updating and rolling-back. Some people may like this, as it allows people to quickly explore which packages are available. Features ======== Jacman provides an interface to the most common functionality of Pacman: * installing new packages. * updating installed packages. * removing unwanted packages. * rolling back packages to a previously installed version. What's New in 0.2? ================== Nothing too major. It's mainly tidying up a lot of loose-ends and making the code more robust. Here's a quick summary: * Rollback package support: allows the user to rollback to a previously installed version of a given package. Only old packages still in the Pacman cache on the hard drive call be rolledback, as old versions of packages don't exist on the servers. * Jon-Anders (SoniX) did lots of great work on the console that displays Pacman's output. It now copes with curses-based output properly. * Talk to Pacman: now have Y/N buttons to confirm to Pacman to continue or abort the operation. V0.1 used the --no-confirm argument which wasn't ideal. * New config option added determine whether the main window closes after a successful operation. For example, if adding a package installed without error, Jacman will close once you click "Done". It is possible to set this option to false so that you will always return to the main menu. * Fixed empty package bug (I think!) Iphitus reported a strange bug where "empty" packages were listed. * An Ant buildscript is now included. * Some internal code restructuring and general code spring-cleaning. Installation ============ Their are two ways to install Jacman. 1. Download the prebuilt Pacman package and install as normal: - Download the Pacman package from http://downloads.berlios.de/jacman/jacman-0.2-1.pkg.tar.gz - `pacman -A /path/to/jacman-0.2-1.pkg.tar.gz' 2. Download the PKGBUILD from the AUR repository (http://aur.archlinux.org/) and install as per AUR instructions. Usage ===== Once installed, you can run Jacman as follows: jacman [-c other_pacman_conf] By default, Jacman will assume that Pacman's config file is located at /etc/pacman.conf. If you wish to specify an alternative, use the -c flag and specify the path to an alternative. For advanced users, there is a config file called jacman.properties that stores global setting for Jacman. The options currently recognised are: * jacman.showWindowInfo [default=false] - displays window position and dimensions. * jacman.useAntiAliasText [default=true] - uses anti-aliased fonts * jacman.disposeMainMenu [default=true] - dispose the main menu after successful operation. Known issues ============ * Much effort has gone in to making the console cope with the curses-based output that Pacman generates. It *should* be fine, but should Pacman change its output format in a new release, then the console presentation *could* be broken. But don't worry, we'll keep on top of it! * Jacman obviously relies on a correctly formed pacman.conf. It's unlikely that an ArchLinux could survive without one, and so I've not implemented any methods to check the conf file's correctness. What Jacman does with a malformed pacman.conf is unknown (not much I expect!) and may not be very graceful. * Jacman doesn't prompt you to sign in as root like many GUI apps do. If you try and do something that you don't have permission for, expect an error telling you so! * Jacman relies on Tahoma fonts for the text in the main menus. This is perhaps not the best dependency to have, and so will investigate more apt OSS fonts for future releases. * Logo in the main window doesn't honour the transparency. Don't know why! Contribute ========== The easiest way to contribute is to simply use Jacman. I'd strongly encourage you to share any bugs and/or feature requests. For anyone who's interested, the Jacman project has a CVS server courtesy of Berlios. Anyone interested in checking out the current development branch should head over to http://developer.berlios.de/projects/jacman/ for further details. If you want to join the Jacman development team, please contact me. Alternatively, the source for v0.2 is available at: http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/andyr/software/jacman/releases/0.1/jacman-0.2_src.tar.gz Jacman has i18n support throughout and so I'm looking for translators. The English labels file is called JacmanLabels.properties. If you translate this file, do not hesitate to get in touch and I'll happily bundle the translation file with future releases. Contact ======= If you wish to contact the developer about Jacman to suggest future features, bugs or anything that you want, please email me at: dev [at] andy-roberts [dot] net * Anti-spam format. Please remove all spaces, and replace '[at]' with the '@' symbol (no quotes), etc.