Easily list package dependencies
Sometimes I wonder about a package and its dependencies, and more specifically
the (installed) size of it all. For a simple list of a package's dependencies,
pactree is a great tool that does the job fine.
But when I'm wondering about the size, something else is needed. In fact, quite
a few times I've found myself doing a pacman -S/-Rs package in order to know
either how much size a package (and its "exclusive" (as in not needd by any
other packages) dependencies) are eating up, or how much would be needed to
install them.
This isn't, however, an ideal solution, obviously. It does require root privileges, even though I don' go through with the transaction, and adds useless entry in pacman.log
So I started thinking about it a bit, fast-forward a little and here comes pacdep
PkgClip 1.1.0 & kalu 1.3.0 released
New versions of PkgClip - Cached Packages Trimmer Utility - and kalu - upgrade notifier for Arch Linux - have just been released.
kalu 1.2.0 released
A new version of kalu - upgrade notifier for Arch Linux - has been released.
How to convert a mercurial repo to git
When I started working on a few things, and needed to use some version control, I used mercurial. This wasn't really something I thought about all that much: I had used subversion & mercurial before (back on Windows) without problems, whereas with git the few times I had to use it (e.g. to try things quickly, or clone a repo) things weren't as smooth (to me, that is).
Admittedly I never bothered looking into git then, and so mercurial was an obvious "choice" when I needed to use a VCS. Just like bitbucket was obvious for the same reason (it's probably the best hosting solution with mercurial support).
But the Linux ecosystem loves git, they're both quite close historically, and lately I decided to actually looked into git. I'm still not done with all the reading, but already I like it a lot.
It can do a lot, so far I understand & like how things work, and I therefore decided to move. Which means, I'll have to convert my mercurial repos into git ones; starting with kalu.
A couple of plugins for WeeChat
When I moved to Linux, I looked for an IRC client. Originally, I wanted/looked for a GUI one, probably because coming from Windows I'm used to GUI applications.
Soon enough it looked like I wouldn't be able to find a client that would fit my needs, so I tried CLI clients, and eventually found WeeChat. It's a great client, does lots of things by itself, but also has scripting support to extend things even further.
kalu now usable from CLI (1.1.0 released)
A new version of kalu - upgrade notifier for Arch Linux - has been released.
Two main changes with this version. Firstly, the addition of two command-line
options - --manual-checks (-m) and --auto-checks (-a) - to run
manual/auto checks from command line. No GUI will be used at all, everything
gets printed on stderr/stdout (using the same templates as for notifications).
This can be done without the need for a DISPLAY/running X server (i.e. no GTK init performed), thus works from a tty or through SSH. This can also be useful to use kalu from scripts.
dapper 0.1.2 released
As I explained before, I don't use a session manager, and when I needed something to take care of handling the autostart of Desktop applications for me, and couldn't find anything what I wanted, I made dapper.
Until now it only followed the FreeDesktop specifications, that is started
things according to .desktop files found in user & system autostart folders.
In that order, in fact.
Version 0.1.2 now works differently, introducing options allowing you to decide which folders should be processed :
dapper: a desktop applications autostarter
A little while ago, XFCE released a new version, 4.10, and with it a few changes
were introduced. Amongst which is the moving of the starting script
(startxfce4), which used to belong to xfce4-util, a package that no longer
exists.
So the script got moved to xfce4-session, which is a little problem for me
because I don't have that one installed, and I don't want to install it. It's
possible I don't know exactly all that a session manager has to offer, but as
far as I know what it would provide me is the ability to shutdown/restart the
computer from XFCE, which I don't care for since I can/would rather do it from
my login shell, or restart whatever applications were running last time I logged
out, something I absolutely don't want at all.
So, I don't use a session manager. But because startxfce4 moved to that
package, I needed to do something. The easiest thing would have obviously been
to just copy that file and keep using it, outside of any packages.
But I wasn't too inclined to do so, because this script does quite a few things, or tries to do them at least, and I figured if I make it my own and need to maintain it, I might as well keep things as simple as possible.
Automatic restart of services on upgrade
Sometimes after an upgrade of the system, there might be a few tasks that needs to be done. For example, aplications or services migh need to be restarted for the new version to be used/in use.
While libalpm/pacman does not have hooks, and neither does kalu, I thought I'd just take a little time to highlight the fact that kalu does support the start of post-sysupgrade processes.
For example, I use this to start localepurge after every sysupgrade (or package installation, though then through my use of alias (function, actually) for pacman) to save some space.
I also have PkgClip, to keep pacman's cache trimmed, and not long ago I added a little script to list deleted librairies in use.
And now, with kalu 1.0.0, I was even able to add a few more things. Besides
having the option to remove the confirmation before starting anything, you can
now use variable $PACKAGES which will be replaced by the list of packages
involved.
PkgClip 1.0.0 & kalu 1.0.0 released
New versions of PkgClip - Cached Packages Trimmer Utility - and kalu - upgrade notifier for Arch Linux - have just been released.
Both have been bumped to 1.0.0, not because they've undergone major changes but simply because my versioning so far had been possibly a little, hmm... "random", so I decided to try and use something better, specifically semantic versioning.
And while both PkgClip & kalu have been stable for a little while now, they were still in the 0.y.z branch, which in semantic versioning should be for development phase, while the first stable version should be 1.0.0, hence the bump.
Of course that's not all, both have actually been updated as well :