Hari's Corner - APT configuration GUI frontend - completed

31 Jul 2009

APT configuration GUI frontend - completed

Filed under: My software by Hari
Posted at 21:42 IST (last updated: 31 Jul 2009 @ 21:53 IST)

I've finished creating an APT configuration GUI for Debian and Debian-based distributions.

It's called Qaptan and is developed using Python/Qt4 and is meant for "power" users who wish to customize the default settings of their package management system. It doesn't touch any system files by itself, but merely allows the end user to generate a configuration file which can be copied over to /etc/apt/apt.conf.

I wrote it because I felt that quite a few useful configuration settings of the APT packaging system are hidden deep in the manual pages and it can be quite tedious to figure out how exactly to get APT to change its default behaviour.

Be warned though! This GUI exposes some very powerful and potentially dangerous options. I thought long and hard whether to include such settings or not, but in the end, I decided to leave them in. Use wisely and carefully. Remember the old Debian saying: if anything breaks, you get both the pieces. :-P

:-P

Seriously though, if you find any bugs or errors, please report them to me and I will make the necessary fixes.

More details, downloads and screen shots in the software pages: Qaptan

8 comment(s)

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Runs well on my box. Your .deb is only for 64 bit though and I didn't notice until I tried to install it I did set it to install recommended packages and then ran aptitude safe-upgrade and it didn't install the recommended packages

Comment by ray (visitor) on 1 Aug 2009 @ 00:24 IST #
Ray, did you export the apt.conf file and then copy it over to /etc/apt/apt.conf first? Merely saving the settings will not make any changes to your system as it's purely for GUI persistence.
Also though the .deb is a 64-bit, the program itself is architecture independent as it's Pure-Python.

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 1 Aug 2009 @ 07:58 IST #
Ah, that'd explain it then

Comment by ray (visitor) on 1 Aug 2009 @ 14:21 IST #
Once you export the apt.conf file, just check the file and see if you see anything unusual. If you have any doubts, let me know.

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 1 Aug 2009 @ 14:43 IST #
The .deb for i386 installed fine on my new Karmic Koala Ubuntu 9.10 alpha (2, I think) and it seems to run. I've not generated a file with it yet, but will try that quite soon.
The .deb won't install on my Ubuntu 8.04 install, as it seems that my version of Python is too old and I will have to jump through too many hoop to update it, at the moment. The python distutils source package installs but won't run, likely as its looking for newer packages. I'll email you the traceback info.

Comment by MrCorey (visitor) on 3 Aug 2009 @ 23:10 IST #
Thanks for the feedback MrCorey. It requires Python 2.5 because that's what I developed it with. I'm not sure if 2.4 will work, but I should probably change the dependency information to allow the deb to install even for older versions. I've not consciously used any 2.5 specific feature.
As for the distutils source, you needn't even install it actually. You can try running the script from where you extracted the source tar.gz directly.

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 4 Aug 2009 @ 08:15 IST #
Please name it "Gabtain". Thanks.

Comment by Teknomancer (visitor) on 9 Aug 2009 @ 17:04 IST #
I wanted to, but I didn't use Gtk, so Gabtain didn't sound very appropriate.
A pity to have missed such a wonderful naming opportunity.

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on 9 Aug 2009 @ 17:08 IST #

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