A native package manager for KDE on Debian

Since KDE4 was released, we Debian users have been missing support for package management on KDE4. KPackage made the move to SmartPM and fell unmaintained. Adept never saw a final release in it's KDE4 version and it is unmaintained as well. It seems PackageKit is going strong among different distributions but, honestly, it lacks good Debian support. Here comes Shaman, a package manager that abstracts all management functionality in backends. Right now it features native support for Arch Linux, PackageKit, and recently, Debian's Advanced Package Tool (APT). The Debian backend is still on early stages (lacks DebConf and media change support [TODO]), but you can already install and remove stuff.

I have planned to make Debconf support integrated inside Shaman itself (unlike KDE3's external configuration dialogs); multiple repositories support (show package's origin); package version selection (from different releases)... what do you want it to have?

If you want to check/test it, or help in development, download the source code at
svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/playground/sysadmin/shaman
the only build dependecies are KDE4 and apt-pkg (package libapt-pkg-dev).

KDE 4.3 live cd

I prepared a new LiveCD of KDE4 which you can download at torrentbox.

This one required a few tweaks in the build system and many rebuilds, ugh. The unstable repository is well named ;).

How to build your own KDE4 Debian livecd
* Download the live-helper configuration from github
* Read Readme.live and make the necessary changes.
* Installing KDE in the livecd requires some script tricks. So, open the config/chroot_local-hooks/kde file and start adding at the end your custom commands
* e.g. apt-get install --yes anki
will add the Anki flashcard program to the Live CD. "--yes" is needed here to avoid apt-get to ask confirmation for every order.

KDE development environment for Windows (MinGW)

As soon as I had my Windows desktop with a basic configuration, I put a KDE 4 installation on it. Instructions on how to set a development environment and build KDE (I skipped it by using the installer) are available in the techbase page.

If you are like me, you may want to try different setups at the same time. Perhaps you want to have both MinGW and MSVC installations for whatever reason. Or just may want a simple and painless environment creation without polluting your desktop. This is what I did:

1) Install devel packages and tools with the KDE installer in a path of your choice. (eg. C:\KDE): kdelibs, kdepimlibs, automoc, qt, kdewin32, gcc-mingw, cmake are the minimal packages you need.
1.1). Apparently dependencies are not resolved for devel packages. So, if you want to install more, make sure to install other devel libraries your module/software needs.

2) Save the following to "mingw.bat" (change paths as necessary):
=======================

@set SOURCE_PATH=C:\src
@set INSTALL_PATH=C:\kde

@set DBUSDIR=%INSTALL_PATH%
@set KDEDIRS=%INSTALL_PATH%
@set KDEWIN_DIR=%INSTALL_PATH%
@set PATH=c:\mingw\bin;%INSTALL_PATH%\bin;%INSTALL_PATH%\lib;%PATH%
@set QT_PLUGIN_PATH=%INSTALL_PATH%\lib\kde4\plugins;%INSTALL_PATH%\plugins
@set STRIGI_HOME=%INSTALL_PATH%
@set XDG_DATA_DIRS=%INSTALL_PATH%\share
cd %SOURCE_PATH%

=======================

What you need to check/change are the INSTALL_PATH and PATH variables to point to your KDE dir and MinGW dir. Save it in your sources dir or anywhere else.

3) The key is the environment shortcut. Select a good place where you will usually start your environment from (e.g. c:\src\). Create a new shortcut to:

%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /K c:\YOURDIR\mingw.bat

And save it as "Environment (MinGW)". Done.

Whenever you will build/install from sources, open "Environment (MinGW)" and start hacking.

Hola Windows

Bueno, reinstalé Windows, y fué un proceso desagradable. Pero quería jugar unos juegos que no encajaban con la combinación Wine + NVIDIA. Después de superar la instalación de los controladores más importantes, procedí a instalar el explorador de los tubos. Pero no instalé Firefox como usualmente se hace. En vez, desde el laptop con Debian descargué el instalador de Arora para Windows. ¡Es extremadamente rápido! (en cuanto a tiempo de respuesta y renderizado de páginas).

En fin, ahora podré trabajar más cómodo en el proyecto KDE, específicamente en los bindings de Ruby.

En otro tema, cuando KDE4 esté disponible en inestable (Debian) construiré una nueva edición del Live-CD (que ya lleva mucho tiempo atrasada). La versión más reciente, 4.2.2, trae bastantes arreglos importantes.

Un pequeño programa en el que estoy trabajando

From KDE

KDE 4.2 Live CD

He preparado un live CD (DC vivo o_o) de KDE 4.2 basado en Debian.

Lo pueden descargar del sitio web del equipo Debian-KDE.

Next wallpaper

I created a simple applet that changes the current wallpaper (when in slideshow mode) on command. Simply add it to the containment and then move it wherever you want.

The source code can be found at:
http://github.com/dpalacio/plasma-nextwallpaper/tree/master

Stupid desktop

Your puny feature is no match for our superior source hacking.

Problema:
== http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mmn2yltzyhz

Solución:
== http://github.com/dpalacio/stupiddesktop/tree

Viva GPL! Viva KDE!