How to Package?

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Tim
Site Admin
Posts: 1454
Joined: Sun Dec 07, 2008 1:14 pm

How to Package?

Post by Tim »

Well...some of the ideas I had to package Bible Analyzer with its dependencies are not going to work. Some of the key files could be bundled but there are some shared libraries with sym links that must be installed in certain places in the system.

There are 7 debs total that must be installed and they are all in this zip file,
www.bibleanalyzer.com/files/wx.4.2.zip

I considered having users add the Lunar (23.04) repository but if they do and then later do a simple "apt upgrade" it will install about 1200 "to new" updates and break their system in a 100 ways.

I considered making a PPA repository with just the above files but then relearned PPAs only take source files, not debs.

I looked at combining the 7 deb files into one deb and all the gurus say that is a big "no no."

So what do we do? Ask users to install 8 separate deb files (including Bible Analyzer) in a certain order just to run Bible Analyzer? That won't fly, and I don't have time to walk people through the process by email who are not very familiar with their computers.

I am spending an inordinate amount of time trying to resolve problems that shouldn't be problems. There should be a simple way to do this. I mean at the very minimum one should be able combine all the debs in a single archive and then have a simple script built in to run them all in order when opened, but I can find nothing like that.

What am I missing here? We now have the files we need but no sensible way to deliver them without confusing many users.

Does anyone have any ideas?
Tim Morton
Developer, Bible Analyzer

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. (Rom 4:5 AV)

RobertRathbone
Posts: 42
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2014 6:40 pm

Re: How to Package?

Post by RobertRathbone »

I've been away from this forum for a while and just now read this post. I have no experience building .deb files so I don't know if you can embed a shell script within one and have it execute during its installation. If it's possible, then could you write a shell script that would do the things that you said a non-power user couldn't/wouldn't do? Perhaps the script could download any files necessary and install them or copy them where they need to go.

I realize I may be speaking about something I don't know, but I thought I'd toss the suggestion out there in case it helps trigger an idea on how to solve your problem.

Hope this helps...
Robert Rathbone

Tim
Site Admin
Posts: 1454
Joined: Sun Dec 07, 2008 1:14 pm

Re: How to Package?

Post by Tim »

I finally found a way to package that I think will work. Look at the Linux beta page.

Thanks.
Tim Morton
Developer, Bible Analyzer

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. (Rom 4:5 AV)

jastombaugh
Posts: 22
Joined: Sat Jun 15, 2019 8:28 pm

Re: How to Package?

Post by jastombaugh »

I considered having users add the Lunar (23.04) repository but if they do and then later do a simple "apt upgrade" it will install about 1200 "to new" updates and break their system in a 100 ways.
:lol: :lol:

This is such a Linux thing!

Actually, isn't there a way to write a bash script to install these (7) debs in the correct order? The "InstallBA5.5.sh" file would simply need to be made executable and then

Code: Select all

sudo bash InstallBA5.5.sh
I'm downloading the 5.5 beta now to check out what you've got.

jastombaugh
Posts: 22
Joined: Sat Jun 15, 2019 8:28 pm

Re: How to Package?

Post by jastombaugh »

https://docs.appimage.org/packaging-gui ... image.html

What obstacles would prevent us from putting BA into an appimage?

Looks like its a YAML file and running it through something like 'pkg2appimage'.

There are even options to 'pretend' certain dependencies are met!

Tim
Site Admin
Posts: 1454
Joined: Sun Dec 07, 2008 1:14 pm

Re: How to Package?

Post by Tim »

The current system using pyinstaller seems to work pretty well on systems that have Python 3.10 installed.

I checked the link and it detailed two issues up front about pkg2appimage:

"It is likely to add lots of bloat to the final AppImage. As it simply extracts the contents of packages..."

"pkg2appimage uses distribution packages downloaded using the package managers, however, the packages are not authenticated, as most security functionality has been deactivated. This is a major security issue. pkg2appimage is therefore recommended for personal use only..."

Just combining together packages will not fix the main dependency issue of Python 3.10. The Python version is an integral part of the OS in each distro and changing it can lead to a lot of issues.

Hopefully, I can get everything to run on Python 3.11 as soon as a wxPython built for it is released.
Tim Morton
Developer, Bible Analyzer

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. (Rom 4:5 AV)

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