After six years of beta testing, QTGZManager reached Release Candidate status.

It's a frontend to pkgtools written in Qt4 C++, compatible with Xfce, Lxde, KDE (3 and 4) and Mate desktops as well as any Slackware 13.0 (and beyond) based distro. The interface resembles a file manager. It can also be used to download official Slackware patches.

More info about this release, like screenshots and features:
https://qtgzmanager.wordpress.com/20...ate-1-is-here/

Download SlackBuild, tarball and slack-desc files here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/jtg...anager/1.0rc1/

Just added a FAQ section in the project's blog to help convince people to try it.

http://qtgzmanager.wordpress.com/faq/


Bye!

This looks like a promising project! I enjoy seeing GUI front-ends/wrappers to the classic command line and ncurses tools. Although I'm content with the classic tools I'm always watchful for GUI tools for those who are less comfortable.

I want to add support for the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE). I have a preliminary patch prepared but I need do some testing.

Thanks Woodsman, I'm glad you liked it.
And I'm looking forward to your patch ;-)

Bye.

A suggestion: in unixcommand.cpp, change whereis -b to which. Trinity is a continuation of KDE3. Although the next official release will have many file name changes, Trinity will retain many files with the same "k" prefix as KDE4. Which one to use?

For a stock Slackware system, KDE4 is presumed installed. Trinity packages are then built to install to /opt/trinity. The respective Trinity scripts in /etc/profile.d ensure /opt/trinity/bin is before /usr/bin in $PATH. The whereis command won't distinguish that but which will. using which ensures the Trinity version of say, kwrite, is used rather than the KDE4 version.

My first test of my patch: After a quick build and short test, I notice there is a presumption of running under Xfce rather than searching the user's environment for a window manager. I received the following dialog when running as non-root:

There are no means to get administrator's credentials.
You'll need to run this application as root.

A little searching revealed the code was presuming to be running in Xfce. This forces the getSUCommand() function to run, which fails because I'm running in Trinity and not Xfce.

For Trinity users I could resolve that by placing all of my patch snippets first in the pecking order, but I think a better long term solution is look in the process list which window manager is running for the user. Then execute the respective code functions.

I'm attaching my patch. As usual with LQ, remove the 'txt' extension when saving to your hard drive.

Attached Files

qtgzmanager-1.0rc1-trinity.diff.txt (6.6 KB, 12 views)

Woodsman, I applied your patch and commited the changes to svn.
I also changed method discoverBinaryPath a little bit, cos spkg was not working anymore.
Can you update the code and test in TDE, please?

Thanks!

I will but I can't test until next weekend because of my schedule this week. When I test will the updated tar.bz2 be available at the same sourceforge link above?

Woodsman, take your time.

Probably I won't be able to release any new tarball this fast, but you can always checkout latest sources using this command:

"svn co https://jtgzmanager.svn.sourceforge....ot/jtgzmanager jtgzmanager"


Bye.

Woodsman,

The URL
https://sourceforge.net/projects/jtg...r/preview/RC2/
has RC2 preview SlackBuild.

This version contains some fixes which were not observed in RC1, as well as your Trinity Desktop support!

I also had to change TDE file manager constant to "kfmclient", cos konqueror did not work with the parameters supplied. The 'TDE support' was tested in Porteus (a TDE based Slack distro).

By the way, what is your name, so I can add you in the THANKS/help section?

Thank you!

It does look promising. Gonna download it and give it a try myself. Just remember I'm a simple user and not a dev or programmer or anything like that, if anything goes wrong, you get simple explanations of what happened instead of dev-worded...unless someone can tell me how to use a debug thing on it if/when it messes something up somewhere, heh.

irgunII,

Thanks for the support. Hope you find it useful.
Don't mind if you're 'not a dev'. What it counts is your tests and feedback!

C'ya.

I was able to build RC2 and start as normal user with no problems.

Observations:

I maintain a local repository of the Slackware mirrors. Seems the only way to use a local repository is to manually edit $HOME/.config/QTGZManager/QTGZManager.conf.

Despite patching for Trinity, I don't see how that support applies anywhere.

Adjusting font sizes do not occur real-time. I had to restart to see the font size change.

Selecting the Close widget button (the 'x' button at the top right of the title bar) does not exit the app but minimizes to the system tray. The Exit button is in the toolbar and there is the File menu, but that kind of feature should be user-defined because many people expect the Close widget to close/exit and not minimize.

Although a front-end/wrapper to pkgtools, some documentation is needed. Slackers typically are more adept at tweaking computers, but without documentation users who would be attracted to this kind of app will be lost without some kind of guide.

Thanks aaarnt, I've built and installed it here, it looks good, I will use it when necessary.

Markus

Woodsman is right about "Selecting the Close widget button (the 'x' button at the top right of the title bar) does not exit the app but minimizes to the system tray. The Exit button is in the toolbar and there is the File menu, but that kind of feature should be user-defined because many people expect the Close widget to close/exit and not minimize."

Also, in the 'setup' window, the mirror list, the columns aren't adjustable. I can't see the end word(s) of some of the mirrors in the mirror list.

Other than that, I'm liking it so far. I have a 'list' of all the installed packages, and I'll be testing other things eventually here and there as I'm always tinkering and adding and deleting packages.

Hi,
You all convinced me! I'll fix the close behavior, letting the user defines what he wants.
I'll take a look at the other points too, but I'm afraid some of them are not likely to change.

Thanks.