GUI package manager

What is wrong with pkg_add and pkg_delete? It's been working great for me, and I think that is the standard in FreeBSD.

If you want everything GUI I suggest Windows 7 or 8, just type appzwiz.cpl and Add/Remove manager pops up.
 
bsduser35325 said:
What is wrong with pkg_add and pkg_delete? It's been working great for me, and I think that is the standard in FreeBSD.

If you want everything GUI I suggest Windows 7 or 8, just type appzwiz.cpl and Add/Remove manager pops up.
OP asked about a GUI package manager for FreeBSD. Do you mean to say that can be accomplished by going to Windows 7 and typing appzwiz.cpl? :) Didn't know that FreeBSD ports can be managed from Windows:e

Does it even make sense what you wrote? Someone wanting a GUI will type in "appzwiz.cpl"?

Finally Sir, what beast is Windows 8? Has it been released yet?

Apologies for the jest...but please respect the fact that people have a myriad of other ways of using a computer. And what you wrote (many old fogies here second it) is not the official FreeBSD policy. The FreeBSD web site http://www.freebsd.org clearly states that the operating system can be used as a desktop. There is a genuine lack of resources with the FreeBSD project, but that's not a excuse for misleading arguments.

And BSD being a server OS is bit of stretch nowadays. Holds also for Solaris, HP-UX and AIX. They are losing share to Linux.

It may be a bit of news to it, but let me present it for larger audience here. I'm in telecom. An European telecom OEM giant of German/Finnish lineage (you can easily guess who) told us flatly that their managed networks for each and every sundry telecom operators are being standardized to RHEL@x86_64 and application servers to RHEL@x86_64 + Oracle + J2EE stack.

FreeBSD is getting relegated to network devices (good for Juniper) but server claim is to be taken with a pinch of salt.

FreeBSD community need to get over this mindset. Leave aside GUI, what about a decent frame buffer console out of stock installation?
 
I'm just about finished with a rodent plugin for the pkg program. This is a hybrid command line / GUI for package management. I'll be releasing the first version pretty soon.

This GUI for package management is not for dummies, so it differs from what is available in Linux. Keyboard command mode is available at all times where you can type in the pkg command you want if this is easier. Besides that, you can also point and click to do your thing. The idea behind the click and point is not to simplify the commands for dummies, but rather to make it easier to execute commands for those who know what they are doing.

This is a short description of the rodent-pkg plugin:

To execute, type "rodent-plug pkg", or if you have rodent filemanager running, go to the top level and click on the pkg icon (the popup menu does the trick too). This will show you an icon view of the installed packages on your system. (screenshot 01).

Click over any icon will give access to the commands which can be applied, like delete, audit, etc.
Right click over empty space will give access to commands which are not applied to a specific installed package, such as update, search, and the whole lot.
There will also be three other icons beside installed packages:
  • Search cache ports

The search icon is just the same as the search from popup menu, or executing "rodent-plug pkg <pattern>". The search result is a new window with icons for remote repository packages. Clicking on any of these allows you to install or perform any other relevant command (screenshot 04).

Furthermore, hover over an icon and you will get a tooltip popup with important information about the installed package (no need to type pkg query <format> <pkg-name>).

The cache icon will send you to the cache directory, where you can right click to execute the pkg add command for any txz.

The ports icon will send you to the ports directory, so you can work with these if no prepared package is available, in the usual way.

When you execute a pkg command from the popup menu, you will get a dialog which allows you to specify any combination of the available options. Search dialog is shown in screenshot 02. And if you don't remember what each option means, there's a help button that will show you the pkg help <command> output. This output is shown in screenshot 03.

If you don't specify the -y option, and the command requests confirmation, a dialog box will pop up, so you can get away with clicking yes or no to get things done (screenshot 05).

If you are not running with euid==0, then commands will be performed with sudo.

Cited screenshots are available at http://xffm.foo-projects.org/screenshots/rodent-pkg-5.2.5/.

Dependencies for rodent-pkg are:

  • librfm (build)
    rodent-fm (run time)

If you want to test rodent-pkg before release to offer your valuable suggestions and comments (preferably at https://sourceforge.net/p/xffm/discussion/), you need to compile librfm, rodent-fm and rodent-pkg from git. Librfm has its own git directory, while rodent-fm and rodent-pkg are under the rodent/apps directory. Git location for both librfm and rodent is currently at https://sourceforge.net/p/xffm/_list/git.

Or you can wait for the release, when that comes about.
 
OctoPkg looks like a good option. Ideally, there would be something like GNOME Software, but that would probably require too many things to be implemented.
 
AsciiWolf please take note of the dates before responding, this thread has reached its conclusion 7 years ago. And even that was a necropost as it was already 2 years old before that. The original question was asked 11 years ago.

ports-mgmt/octopkg was added to the ports tree 6 years ago.
 
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