OpenBSD Journal

OpenBSD Graphical Ports System Frontend

Contributed by mk/reverse on from the I-don't-like-CLI dept.

Igor writes:

Here is a little project of mine called pbrowser which might -- hopefully -- be useful to some of you. pbrowser (pbrowser = PortsBrowser) is a free implementation of a graphical frontend for the ports(7) system. It allows for easy browsing through the ports(7) tree and offers search facilities to a certain extent (e.g. search for all packages which depend on package glib-2.0 etc.). It is also possible to install and or delete ports and packages with pbrowser. Some screenshots and the sources can be found here

This looks as if it might be very useful for quick navigation around the ports tree, so give it a try and give Igor some feedback.

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Anonymous Coward (67.70.74.251) on

    Wow!!! That is very cool indeed. I don't use X on my BSD boxes but will be installing it soon on my laptop again just to try this out. This would be a nice 'stock' feature in both OpenBSD and FreeBSD! Nice work!

    Comments

    1. By Gary (221.127.243.170) on

      Nice piece of work, though I'm still wondering how many people out there are actually having X on their OBSD..

      Comments

      1. By Anthony (68.145.111.152) on

        I don't run X on my OBSD machine, but run plenty of GUI stuff on it that gets displayed on my Linux box (aumix, xcdroast, etc). If I had this software I would use it in the same way. I have no idea what its capabilities are, but it's possible that its capabilities will make it easier to use than using the ports tree directly. Not that it's hard now, but if this was easier...

      2. By Anonymous Coward (70.66.36.81) on

        I am sure there are huge amount more than you think. Why does everybody think nobody runs X on OpenBSD. OpenBSD is alot more than just a great firewall.


        Comments

        1. By Anthony (68.145.111.152) on

          "OpenBSD is alot more than just a great firewall."

          Sure... but it is a damn good firewall. It's not a stretch to say the best firewall. However, it is far from the best generic desktop OS.

          I've tried it as a desktop OS, but there's always been little niggling problems that eventually made me go back to Linux. At the command line, I prefer OpenBSD... but SSHing to my OpenBSD box over the LAN is not particularly difficult.

          Comments

          1. By jcs (209.242.5.52) on

            I've tried it as a desktop OS, but there's always been little niggling problems that eventually made me go back to Linux.

            such as what?

            Comments

            1. By Anonymous Coward (68.125.87.208) on

              I'd like to see this answered as well.

            2. By cc (208.191.164.101) maxentropic at hotmail.com on

              I tried to use OpenBSD as a desktop once upon a time, around 3.3 or 3.4. As I recall, Mozilla didn't work, OpenOffice didn't work, and of course VMware doesn't have a current native implementation (though this last item is not unique to OBSD). And many of the ports aren't current, so you end up compiling yourself -- no big deal, but you don't get the advantages of the ports system (I wasn't running -current, but then I don't typically have to with the Linux distros I've tried in order to get relatively recent apps). I probably could have made it work, but it was too much effort relative to the time I wanted to spend on it. It was too bad really, because I think that OBSD has the easiest install and simplest, most straightforward configuration of any OS I've used. Maybe I'll try again at 3.6... cc

              Comments

              1. By Anonymous Coward (68.125.87.208) on

                "Mozilla didn't work"

                Package works fine.

                "OpenOffice didn't work"

                Never tried it; Abiword works great for when I need that sort of thing.

                "VMware doesn't have a current native implementation"
                Isn't that the vendors problem?

                VMWare for OpenBSD:
                http://monkey.org/~marius/pages/?page=VMWare_for_OpenBSD

                "many of the ports aren't current"

                "many" says a whole lot of nothing. Seldom is the need for anything "current", except when it comes to security, which is dealt with as quickly as humanly possible.

                Comments

                1. By DM (83.31.226.24) on

                  "Seldom is the need for anything "current", except when it comes to security, which is dealt with as quickly as humanly possible."

                  I can't agree: e.g. 3.6 has gtk version 2.4.4 whereas current is 2.4.13. I think that 2.4.10 could be easely shipped with 3.6. 2.4.4-2.4.13 releases were mainly bug-fixes, unfortunately these bugs affect application I'm developing so I can't do it on obsd.
                  I don't feel lucky enough to compile it on my own.

                  --
                  DM

                  Comments

                  1. By DM (194.29.137.67) on

                    Well, I just checked out -current ports tree. It has nice shiny
                    gtk-2.4.13 in it. Thanks guys.

                    --
                    DM

                2. By uncitizen (67.37.28.9) on

                  "VMware doesn't have a current native implementation"

                  Isn't that the vendors problem?

                  While this may be a vendor problem, what apps are typically more important on a workstation than the OS. I am reminded of an old Mac vs Wintel post from the early 90s (paraphrased):

                  If a diehard Mac-Using Graphical Arts professional was given the choice of a Corner office with a Mac installed every graphical tool on the Earth EXCEPT Photoshop VS. a Windows PC in the basement with ONLY Photoshop, he'd probably take the machine with Photoshop.

                  Comments

                  1. By jona (80.58.34.107) none on none

                    Has been requested... http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=9254&tstart=0

                3. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

                  Get real, there are dozens of outdated ports in the openbsd ports tree, and it does cause people to have to use other systems with reasonably up to date packages. Why is openbsd still on gimp 1.x? 2.x adds enough functionality that the software is actually worth using now, its a huge list of improvements. Why is freetype 1 and gd 1 still in the ports tree, when version 2 is out of both? Version 2 of freetype has noticable font quality improvments, while avoiding the patent issue of freetype 1, and without gd2, creating 24 bit colour jpgs from php doesn't work.

                  Comments

                  1. By Brad (67.69.154.28) brad at comstyle dot com on

                    Some things like FreeType/GD CANNOT be upgraded. We have to provide both v1 and v2 since the API's have changed between versions. If you have an application that requires gd 2 then submit a port. FreeType 2 comes with X. I don't see a problem except for a clueless lewser complainging about nothing.

                    Comments

                    1. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

                      Yeah, I would just love to have to make a port for every piece of software I use. No offense, but its much easier to just use an OS where the packages are updated more often. I didn't say "port gimp2 now", so don't get all testy, I was giving examples to "mr. you don't need updated software" that yes, there really is software that is seriously outdated in ports, that has actual need to be updated.

            3. By Anthony (68.145.111.152) on

              -Java (I know it's a bad license, and it's the vendor's problem, etc. But I still need it.)
              -Doesn't use the second output on my video card correctly (Matrox G550 AGP 32mb)
              -no USB 2.0 (I understand this is fixed now or soon, but at the time it was a concern)
              -instability using arts

              and so on like that.

              It's possible some of these have been fixed, but I'm not inclined to fuck with a setup that works.

              And, yes, Linux does have niggling problems. A lot. It just doesn't have showstoppers for me as a desktop OS. For almost anything on the command line, I SSH to my OpenBSD machine.

          2. By Anonymous Coward (69.197.92.181) on

            Your experience doesn't mean openbsd makes a bad desktop though. I use openbsd as a desktop, and have tried linux repeatedly, always going back to openbsd because of linux having 'niggling problems'.

  2. By r_a_trip (82.74.241.161) ronald(dot)trip(at)gmail(dot)com on

    I briefly looked it over on the site and it seems like a nice interface to a console based back-end. Reminds a bit of Synaptic by Connectiva that interfaces with Debian's APT. Will it be available on FreeBSD 5? I want to try out both ;)

    Comments

    1. By Peter Markowsky (129.10.214.122) on

      Yeah, this also reminds me of Synaptic. The only feature I wish it had was the ability to bulk download and install packages, this would be ideal for large packages such as gnome which consist of numerous components. Otherwise I love pbrowser. Great work.

  3. By Anonymous Coward (203.12.167.121) on http://www.bytelabs.org/images/portbrowser-install.jpg

    This looks like good software.
    I have a question what does "warning: large integer implicitly truncated to unsigned type" mean in the port installation output viewable at http://www.bytelabs.org/images/portbrowser-install.jpg ?

    Does this have something to do with integer overflows?
    Coupled with the fact that afew years ago when I used sharity light as a SMB client to connect to some Windows 2000 shares I would sometimes get hard lockups on the OpenBSD machine (from memory I had to use the power button to reboot the machine, I don't think SSH was accessible over the network, I dont remember if there was a kernel panic but I don't think so) perhaps someone should take a look at the sharity light source code.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (68.125.87.208) on

      ""warning: large integer implicitly truncated to unsigned type""

      It's a compiler warning, and it means exactly what it is telling you. Keyword here is "implicitly" versus "explicitly". Were it explicit, there would be no warning, because that's what the compiler wants to see.

  4. By Anonymous Coward (140.221.252.222) on

    I seriously wish it was done with ncurses and no crappy useless X.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymized Coward(tm) (80.142.56.212) on

      Stop wishing and whining and code it yourself, asshole.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (130.233.220.23) on

      Did you actually look at the screen shots. Looks good to me.

  5. By Anonymous Coward (203.173.34.57) on

    now all we need is an ncurses frontend

  6. By RC (4.11.46.164) on

    Personally, I think we really need a text front-end to ports. No, make isn't (quite) good enough. I want to be able to install all my programs (such as Sylpheed) without ALL OF GNOME automatically being compiled and installed, for no reason.

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