download_file rewritten

This has been on the to-do list for a very long time, and is going to please a lot of people.

PKGget, and other scripts, call /usr/bin/download_file to download a file from the Internet. The complaint is that the download window is in all virtual desktops, and is always on-top of other windows. This makes it difficult to do other work while a download is in progress.

The download_file script goes back a long way. It started life in 2010 and had input from various people, and has remained essentially the same up to now. I was curious about it's status in woof-CE:

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/blob/testing/woof-code/rootfs-skeleton/usr/sbin/download_file

Looking at the changes committed over the years; just details, it has remained essentially the same as my original version. Here are the woof-CE commits:

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/commits/testing/woof-code/rootfs-skeleton/usr/sbin/download_file

Essentially the same; there has been some deviation. I added an abort button in 2015; that was two years after leaving managing the Puppy project, so that button is not in the woof-CE version.

I have now rewritten it so that it is now a normal window, that does not force itself to always be "on top", nor does it appear in all virtual desktops:

...notice also, the progress-bar, instead of rows of dots.

Here is the commit to woofQ on github:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/3144062d29cb95bbbcf1cfe04729a0077161fd11

So many changes; it might be more meaningful to view the complete new file:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/blob/main/easyos/easy-code/rootfs-skeleton/usr/bin/download_file

This could also be used in woof-CE, except that I have dropped all of the PUPMODE handling code. Which would be easy to add back in if required. It does require gtkdialog be compiled with vte (virtual terminal) support, which may not be the case with some pups.       

Tags: easy