MindlessCode.net

(12 + 144 + 20 + 3 * 4 ^ .5) / 7 + 5 * 11 == 9 ^ 2 + 0

That is:
A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three time the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.

Oh, I am such a geek.

Autopackage has a pretty decent API that does everything from comparing versions, to finding shared libraries, to installing menu items. A while ago, in a comment on Mike’s blog (can’t find it now), someone suggested writing bindings for the Autopackage API. At first I wasn’t sure if it would be useful, but now that I’ve thought about it, it’s seems like it could be pretty handy.

I know that there are corporate lawyers at ISVs who are just going to require an EULA to be displayed and accepted before any files land on disk. This ISV would like to provide a Linux version of their software, but their lawyers and managers require the installer to display an EULA and serial key check.

I think this is a case where libautopackage (or whatever it’s called) could be useful. The company writes their installer in C which handles all the interaction like showing EULAs, checking serial key numbers, showing screen shots, playing stupid music, etc. Meanwhile, libautopackage is chugging away in the background, checking/installing dependencies, installing menu items, updating environment variables, and doing whatever it is that installers do.

The ISV gets several benefits that they wouldn’t get from rolling their own installer:

• Our binary compatibility tools (well, they could use them without autopackage, but it wouldn’t be integrated).
• Dependency Checking/Resolution
• Our non-Autopackage APIs like compareVersions(), isInList(), getKey(), and stripDupedItems()
• Our APIs for installing distro dependent stuff like menu items and MIME types

And some other stuff as well, like their program is listed in the package manager, statistics on installs, auto-updates (maybe, in the future? I think Curtis may have had some code for this…), etc.

Some of this can be accomplished by the ISV writing a new frontend for Autopackage. However, a new FE doesn’t exactly have the same flexibility as a new installer.

One example of where this would be useful is an office suite. Often times, an office suite has optional addons (such as extra file format converters, language packs, etc). The custom installer could ask the user what they wanted installed, then use libautopackage to install the core application and each optional component as an Autopackage.

Writing the bindings probably wouldn’t exactly be easy, as Autopackage is written almost entirely in bash, and is most of the APIs require global variables to be set, like $PREFIX, $WORKING_DIR, and $AUTOPACKAGETARGET. Also, I’ve never heard of bindings from bash to C, it could be pretty slow (starting a bash session each time a function is called!). And no, rewriting Autopackage in C doesn’t really sound like fun!

Anyway, it’s an idea…very possibly/probably just more inane ramblings from Taj. Thoughts? Good idea? Bad idea? Impossible to implement? Leave a comment!

Terribly incrimination photo of Kit and me taking an HP laptop apart:

Man, I forgot how fun it is to take apart computers. This particular computer is “having issues”, it is randomly shutting off. New “System Boards” (this computer has everything on one PCB) run about $300. Sometimes I miss “real” computers where everything is on its own board.

Happy Birthday:
To Eli! (Apr 12)
And to Dave! (Apr 14)
And to Mike! (Apr 17)
And me too, I guess (Apr 16)

Uhh…I forgot the point of this post. We’ve picked The Red Headed League (a Sherlock Holmes story) for this years Spanish play, and so the translating to Spanish has begun, as well as the scene painting. We’re reusing most of last years scene…should be interesting.

/me returns to hacking on KDEDIRS for Autopackage

Wow, I haven’t posted in here for a month or something. Not that it really matters, this is just the uninteresting rambleings of a Linux Geek. Hmm, two ‘ing’ words right after each other…isn’t there a rule against that or something?

(Little voice in head says: “Shut up Taj! Focus, write, find silly bug, go to bed!”)
Erm, OK, I’ll try…

Just got back from 2 days at Ki-Aikido camp, wow, totally a great camp! The camp was in Tigard (near Portland, OR) and about 50 people attended. There were people who came all the way down from Calgary, AB, Canada, and Vancouver, BC, Canada. (/me looks at map) Man, that is a long way!

Anyway, it was a blast, there were just as many instructors with black belts as there were students, and it was a lot of fun to train with lots of different people. I also learned that there are people who are a geeky/nerdy as me. That is, real, living, breathing, people who actually know what TCP/IP is, who have no clue about pop culture, catalog lots of useless information (for example, the kind of plastic your cup is made out of, the number of paved runways in Albania (3!, no I didn’t check), and the UPC code of any product on the table), and don’t need to shop at a mall for junk. Yeah, that about sums me up. Possibly other people too…heh–know anybody?

Anyway, if you were at camp and found this (how!?), please leave a comment and say hi! Leave your email address too if you want, it won’t be published, but I’ll have it.

I came home to 75 comment spams…ugg, stupid things clogging up my inbox. Like I actually write anything, anyway. Yes, I have Bad Behaviour installed (here I am talking like a Brit again, when will it ever end?), it helps a lot, but a few still slip through every now and then (mostly people who are paid to do it…they load the style sheet).

Oh, and before I go to bed, why do cell phones always suck? I don’t own a mobile (shock, horrer, I must be the only person in the world without one), but every single time I use one the call is all choppy and full of static so it’s impossible to hear. I mean, I was in the middle of down-town Tigard, OR (pop 44,000), which is right next to Portland, OR, with ~2 million in the MSA. Ugg, I hate cell phones.