PacKommander Home Page

What is PacKommander ? 

Why ?                                 

 History   ( :P)                        

Features                              

• Quite light-weight and fast.
• Can perform almost all the tasks that CLI pacman can do. This includes install /upgrade /remove /query /view details /search packages both from server repositories as well as local packages in hard disk.
• Can be (in fact, must be) started as normal user to perform non-admin tasks like search/query pacakges. Root privilege is sought for automatically (using gksudo) as and when required (e.g. to install/remove packages).
• Can handle multiple packages  at a time using a 'Package Queue' system. Essentially, a list of queued packages is shown (packages can be added/removed from queue), from where you can select and manipulate multiple packages.
• Certain tasks like Upgrading entire system, syncing database with server, clearing cache, optimizing pacman, etc can be done by a click of a button.
• Hand-editing of certain configuration files is also supported using nano editor in xterm.
• Every task is actually carried out by pacman. The progress can be seen in the external xterm window and the user has to interact with it limitedly (for confirmations, etc.)
• The UI is fully configurable using Kommander-editor.

Download  & Installation    

    The current version of PacKommander is 2.5 .
You can download the tar.bz2 file  HERE  from  sourceforge.net.

Dependencies :  

• Kommander is the main one. You can get the PKGBUILD for Arch Linux from AUR  HERE .  ( A pkg.tar.gz binary of kommander is there for download at the sourceforge.net download page as 'additional package', but I can't vouch for it!) Note that kommander itself requires kdelibs.
• gksu, xterm : Both of these can easily be replaced by suitable alternatives.
• nano : For editing of configuration files
• pacman : Obviously!!!

     There is nothing really to install it ! Once you have installed kommander, and extracted the tar.bz2 file, just open a terminal in the location of extracted files (as normal user) and type (without quotes) :  

'  kmdr-executor packommander.kmdr  '

This will start the GUI.

Known bugs / Problems   

• Pressing the ESC key (even by mistake) closes the app as it is, WITOUT A WARNING!! This is not a problem with packommander itself, but the kmdr-executor! If anyone knows of a solution , please inform me.
•  For some bizarre reason, the program might refuse to work properly when started as ROOT. Better start it as normal user, since root permission will be automatically sought for via gksudo/sudo as and when required.
• There are certain problems with the layout and the app may look bad with resolutions other than 1024x768 (NOT tested with other resolutions). Layout design is not very easy with kommander, it seems. I'v tried to rectify it and make it look as good as possible. It is recommended  that you MAXIMIZE the window after starting the app.

Screenshots                     

Click on images for seeing larger size :

             

     Alternatively, you can visit   this Picasa Web Album

License                                           

GNU GPL

Contact Me                                     

For any suggestions /comments /queries feel free to mail me (Sayan Chakrabarti) at  s26c.sayan@ubuntu.co.in
This is my first serious attempt at developing anything, so I'd love to hear from you, esp. if you find this software useful! :-)

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                             Thanks to sourceforge.net for hosting this project.