PKGget working in easyVoid version 240229

Continuing the woofV project, here is the previous post:

https://bkhome.org/news/202402/woofv-built-easyvoid-240224-working-well.html

The significance of easyVoid with version numbering yymmdd, that is, year-month-day, is that it is built by woofV and populated entirely by the XBPS package manager.

PKGget, the package manager in EasyOS, is a descendent of PPM, the Puppy Package Manager. PKGget will now recognise the existence of XBPS and become a GUI frontend for it. Starting it up:

EasyOS defaults to the "classical" UI of earlier pups; I think that recent pups have a different UI, but functionality is basically the same. The Void "current" repository has "abiword" entry, so I clicked on that to install it. Not that I would use Abiword (past experience was not good), but OK for this demonstration. There is a confirmation window:

After clicking the "Install abiword" button, there is a drop down to XBPS:

After installation, the installed packages show up in PKGget, and there is a menu entry:

PKGget has sophisticated dependency-checking; you cannot uninstall a package if it is a dependency of another. For example, when I click on the "goffice" entry in "Installed packages", uninstall is refused:

So, have to uninstall "abiword" and "libabiword" first. When I click on the "abiword" entry in "Installed packages", it drops down to XBPS:

...need to fix that title in the terminal window. Abiword is removed, and PKGget provides some useful information about dependencies that are no longer required:

PKGget, like its ancestor PPM, is a chameleon, able to install many different types of packages, such as .deb, .rpm, .pet, .tar.xz, etc. And now .xbps. However, so far only .xbps and .pet have been implemented to work with XBPS.

So, if a .pet is installed, PKGget will convert it to .xbps and then use the underlying XBPS to install it. In the "pet-noarch" repository, I chose to install "desk_background_after-sunset-reddish-clouds-lake", by clicking on the entry:

The PET package installs OK, and in a terminal can confirm that XBPS handled the actual install:

There are a lot of things still to be fixed and implemented. There are some caveats and gotchas also, and details still to be thought through. This blog post is to give a taste of what to expect. It is basically working, quite well actually.

Family gathering all day today. Need a couple more days to work on it, then hopefully can release a pre-alpha for anyone interested in testing it.  And of course another interesting feature will be the inbuilt "woofV" -- to be described later.    

Tags: easy