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Application Install Tool for Whore^WHoary Hedgehog
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Ross Burton <ross@burtonini.com>
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The application presents to the user a list of applications which can be
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installed or removed. These applications are either end-user applications (such
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as OpenOffice, GIMP, Gaim) or server-side roles (HTTP server, FTP server).
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These can be added and removed by toggling a check box. The applications will
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be shown in a tree identical to the Applications menu on the panel, and system
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roles in a separate list.
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The package information based on Freedesktop .desktop files. This is due to all
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end-user applications already having a .desktop file which can be extended with
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a small amount of metadata for use by the application install tool. These
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.desktop files will be extracted from the Hoary archive automatically and a
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package solely containing .desktop files and the relevant icons created.
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For a package to be available the .desktop file must have a X-AppInstall-Package
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key under the [Desktop Entry] group, which is the name of the package the
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desktop file relates too. The Name, Comment and Icon keys will be used in the
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Example 1: Sound Juicer
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Name=Sound Juicer CD Ripper
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Comment=Extract music from your CDs
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Categories=GNOME;Application;AudioVideo;
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X-AppInstall-Package=sound-juicer
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The only change her from the upstream .desktop file is the X-AppInstall-Package
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key, which marks this application as to be displayed in the interface. The
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existing Name, Comment and Icon fields are displayed to the user in the
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Example 2: OpenOffice.org
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OpenOffice.org installs a number of .desktop files, none of which are suitable
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for displaying in an Application Install tool as they are for particular aspects
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of the suite (i.e. Writer or Impress). In this case a new .desktop file is
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added to the package, which contains the required information alongside a
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Hidden=true key. The Hidden key ensures that it won't be displayed in any
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application menus, but can be picked up by the Application Install Tool.
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Comment=Powerful office suite
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Categories=GNOME;Application;Office;
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X-AppInstall-Package=openoffice.org
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The menu layout is based upon the Freedesktop menu specification. Currently
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GNOME does not support this standard, but hopefully GNOMEE 2.10 will. At the
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moment the Application Install Tool includes a copy of the Applications menu
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structure in the Freedesktop menu format, which can be removed if GNOME 2.10
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does move to it. [note: this depends on API additions to PyXDG]
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TODO: Instead of X-AppInstall-Package, use X-AppInstall-Packages which is a list
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of required packages. This will primarily used for the "Web Server" role which
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would require "apache-mpm-worker" and "apache2-doc" at least. The UI should
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represent partial-installs and allow the user to fully install or remove a
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partial install. I'm not sure if this or enforcing Recommends: to be installed
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TODO: Currently the X-AppInstall-Icon key is used in preference over the Icon
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key if the standard Icon is not suitable. I'm not sure there is a solid
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removed
README
