apt-get update in building Meilix through Travis

Meilix uses Travis to build and then make a github release of the ISO. There are packages that get built in the script executed by Travis.

What problem it is solving? It’s the need of apt-get update which are:

  • Update of the system to support for the newest builds.
  • Adding of the repo after adding a Personal Package Archives (‘PPAs’)

By default, Travis disabled apt-get update for every build. So if we want to run it automatically for each build, we can do it in two different ways.

Way 1:Running apt-get update in before_install step.

Implementation in .travis.yml of Meilix

print 'hello world!'
sudo: required

before_install:
  - apt-get update

 

We already used sudo so there is no need to use sudo in the apt-get update.

This is the most simplistic approach and it update the system packages and source list before installing any packages.

Way 2: executing apt-get update in Travis through APT addon.

The addon comes under the include step and the lint follows this order:

include:
  - os: linux
    addons:
      apt:
        update: true
        sources:
          - ubuntu-toolchain-r-test
        packages:
          - debootstrap
          - genisoimage
          - p7zip-full
          - squashfs-tools
          - ubuntu-dev-tools
          - dpkg-dev
          - debhelper
          - fakeroot
          - devscripts

 

This is helpful in case when we don’t have the before_install step. Additionally, it allows us to specify the packages we need to install.

Choosing between the two options

One can adopt any of the above process to implement apt-update in Travis.

Meilix uses the second approach as because we don’t have before_install parameter.

Sometimes we need some commands to get executed before updating the system, so in that case we prefer before_install to prioritize the tasks.

Resources:

 

 

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Creating an Installer for PSLab Desktop App

PSLab device is made useful with applications running on two platforms. One is Android and the other one is a desktop application developed using Python frameworks. Desktop application uses half a dozen of dependent libraries and they are required to be installed prior to installing the application itself.

For someone with zero or less knowledge on how to install packages in a Linux environment, this task will be quite difficult. To ease up the process of installing the desktop application in a computer, we can use a script to run specific commands which will install the dependencies and the application.

Dependencies required by PSLab  Desktop app

  • PyQt 4.7
  • Python 2.6, 2.7 or 3.x
  • NumPy, Scipy
  • pyqt4-dev-tools
  • Pyqtgraph
  • pyopengl and qt-opengl
  • iPython-qtconsole

These dependencies can be made installed using a bash script running with root permission. A bash script will have the file extension “.sh” and a header line;

#!/bin/bash

A bash script needs to be made executable by the user himself. To do this, user needs to type a one line command in the terminal as follows and enter his password;

sudo chmod +x <Name_of_the_script>.sh

The keyword “sudo” interprets as “Super User DO” and the line follows will be executed with root permission. In other words with administrative privileges to modify system settings such as copying content to system folders.

The keyword “chmod” stands for “Change Mode” which will alter the mode of a file. In current context, the file is made executable by adding the executable property to the bash script using “+x” syntax.

Once the script is made executable, it can be executed using;

sudo ./<Name_of_the_script>.sh

An installer can be made attractive by using different colors rather than the plain old text outputs. For this purpose we can use color syntax in bash script. They are represented using ANSI escape codes and following is a list of commonly used colors;

Black        0;30     Dark Gray     1;30
Red          0;31     Light Red     1;31
Green        0;32     Light Green   1;32
Brown/Orange 0;33     Yellow        1;33
Blue         0;34     Light Blue    1;34
Purple       0;35     Light Purple  1;35
Cyan         0;36     Light Cyan    1;36
Light Gray   0;37     White         1;37

As in any programming language, rather than using the same line in many places, we can define variables in a bash script. The syntax will be the variable name followed by an equal sign with the value. There cannot be spaces around the equal sign or it will generate an error.

GREEN='\033[0;32m'

These variables can be accessed using a special syntax as follows;

${GREEN}

Finally we can output a message to the console using the “echo” command

echo -e "${GREEN}Welcome to PSLab Desktop app installer${NOCOLOR}"

Note that the keyword “-e” is used to enable interpretation of the following backslash escapes.

In order to install the packages and libraries, we use two package management tools. One is “apt” which stands for “Advanced Packaging Tool” and the second is “pip” which is used to download python related packages from “Python Package Index”. The following two lines illustrates how the two commands can be accessed.

apt-get install python-pip python-dev build-essential -y

pip install pyqtgraph

The keyword “-y” avoids the confirmation prompt in console to allow installation by pressing “Y” key every time it installs a package from “apt”.

Resources:

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Package Manager Translation for Meilix

There are many Linux distros and all of them use variety of different package managers. So a particular user of that specific Linux distro is familiar with that distro package manager commands only. Due to which when that user is out at a event or someplace else and require to install or remove or update package using the commands he is familiar with, he may get errors in doing so if that distro doesn’t have a package manager that he is familiar with.

To overcome this problem we can have a solution of adding package manager command translating functionality to Meilix. To translate the commands of package manager like pacman, apt, yum, zypper we have build translation modules for each. To install these modules we first check the Linux distro and map it to the package manager it is using. For this we write the following script.

 declare -A osInfo;
  osInfo[/etc/redhat-release]=yum
  osInfo[/etc/arch-release]=pacman
  osInfo[/etc/gentoo-release]=emerge
  osInfo[/etc/SuSE-release]=zypp
  osInfo[/etc/debian_version]=apt-get

 

Then after checking the native package manager it copy the modules required for that packet manger to the bin and makes them executable.These modules can be called by the names of the packet manager not available on

These modules can be called by the names of the packet manager not available on system. The module reads the arguments and convert command according to it. Like for pacman to apt module, a simple pacman command to install a app is

Now, the pacman is a module called from bin using two arguments and these two arguments use a switch statement are converted.

Example of commands in ubuntu / debian based system using apt but the user was familiar with pacman

Installing package:

pacman -S PACKAGE

Gets translated to:

apt install PACKAGE

Remove package:

apt install PACKAGE

Gets translated to:

apt remove PACKAGE

Update software database :

pacman -Syy

Gets translated to:

apt update

Show updatable packages:

pacman -Qu

Gets translated to:

apt list --upgradable

Update all:

pacman -Syu

Gets translated to:

apt upgrade

 

Mew ensures the cross distro package manager command compatibility by providing translations which is a helpful tool especially at events where users may find it difficult to operate system if he cannot install or add the specific package he requires at that time. Mew helps in making the user experience better as the user don’t have to struggle with the package manager commands he is not familiar with.

contribute to the project by forking: https://github.com/fossasia/mew

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