My new project: easy application Installer for Linux

I was playing recently with Qt4, trying to iprove my skills and to create a really useful program - an application installer. Here is screenshot of what I've done.

I really like how Mac OSX installers look and I was inspired of them. And I strongly beleive that the installing an application sould be strightforward and simple process, that does not require any special skills nor root (admin) privileges.

Also, installed program should looks like a single file, or icon, and installer must hide any required libraries, dependencies etc.

What is required should be installed transparently.

Currently the work is in progress. Planned features are:
- Comprehensive ini file, describing the install process
- separate Bundle maker
- Drag application icon and drop it anywere at user's choice
- Beautiful graphics
- Applications should be bundled with all required libraries.
- Installer should detect the most famous Linux distros and do not install some libraries if they are preinstalled by default - Qt in Kubuntu for example.
- Installed application should check the internet (preferably the bundle  packager site) for newer versions available and offer the user to upgrade them.
- All application's binaries shoud by digitaly signed from packager
- Altough it is not shown on the picture, there must be an icon for Licence description file

If you are interested in and want to get involved, feel free to contact me.

New C# Qt bindings package for Archlinux

Assemblygen is brand new Qt4 binding for Mono C#. It aims to be more effective on signals / slots mechanism and is more C# friendly at all.

C# (eg. Mono) is not very popular in Linux these days. I don't know why. I think it is a powerful language with very bright future (especially in embeded or small sized devices), just like Java is.


And here is my small contribution about - an Archlinux package. To be honest, this is my first package I ever uploaded un AUR. Hope it is useful.

Here is how to install it under Archlinux or derivatives:

yaourt -S assemblygen-git

In case you have no yaourt installed, just download the package from here and build it. In this case you also need two more packages made by me:

smokegen-git and smokeqt-git.

And here is my first test program using C# and assemblygen, hope it will become a text editor some day:



using System;
using Qyoto;

namespace TextEd
{
public class MainClass : QMainWindow
{
    public QTextEdit editor;
    public MainClass(QWidget parent) : base(parent)
    {
        SetupEditor();
        this.MenuBar = new QMenuBar();
        this.CentralWidget = editor;
        Resize(600, 400);
        Show();
    }
      
    protected override void OnCloseEvent (QCloseEvent arg1)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("on close event");  
        base.OnCloseEvent (arg1);
    }
      
    private void SetupEditor()
    {
        editor = new QTextEdit();
    }
      
    public static int Main(String[] args)
    {
        var a = new QApplication(args);
        MainClass w = new MainClass(null);
        QApplication.Exec();
        Console.WriteLine("exit");
        return 0;
    }
}
}