[e-lang] Linux packages for E

[Thomas Leonard]

Hi guys,

I wanted to make E easier to install on Linux, so I've made some
packages. On a clean install of a modern Linux distribution, you
should now be able to do this:

$ 0alias rune http://repo.roscidus.com/e/e-core
$ rune
? println("Hello from E!")
Hello from E!


You will be prompted to accept my (new) GPG key (DA98 25AE CAD0 8975
7CDA  BD8E 0713 3F96 CA74 D8BA). If you don't have the 0alias command
you will probably be prompted to get it from your distribution. If
not, you can use one of these commands:

$ sudo apt-get install zeroinstall-injector           # (Debian or Ubuntu)
# yum install zeroinstall-injector                        # (Fedora)

If should automatically pull in the OpenJDK 6 JRE if you don't have it
already. Binaries for x86 and x86_64 are currently available, but we
can add more easily if needed. On Fedora, an SELinux box may pop up
reminding you to turn off SELinux to use Java[1]. I haven't tested on
other distributions, but it should work. If your distribution is too
old to have 0alias, you can get it directly from the
http://0install.net/ site.


Note that the "e-core" package only contains the E runtime ("e.jar"
and "rune", basically). It does not contain the example scripts,
CapDesk, etc, and it does not depend on SWT, as people might not want
all of that just to be able to run E programs. It's based off of the
current svn, with a minor patch for the matchBind problem and changes
to the build to exclude unnecessary bits and to provide a working
"rune" out of the box (no "rune-template"). The changes can be seen
here: http://gitorious.org/repo-roscidus/e-core/commits/master

I've made a separate e-swt package that depends on e-core and on SWT,
which you can use like this:

$ 0alias rune-swt http://repo.roscidus.com/e/e-swt
$ rune-swt someprog.e-swt


The packages do not register file associations (Zero Install
installation is side-effect free), but I don't think this should be a
problem. Developers will probably want to run their programs using
their rune or rune-swt aliases, and users will normally get a package
with a dependency on the right "rune", resolved automatically through
the package metadata, rather than double-clicking on a raw .e file.

The packages are hosted on repo.roscidus.com, which is a site for
packages where upstream doesn't provide a Zero Install feed. If you'd
prefer to host it on erights.org, just let me know.

Let me know if it works for you!


[1] OK, you could probably edit your SELinux policy rather than
turning the whole thing off, but I don't use Fedora or SELinux
normally and I don't know how to do it.


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard		ROX desktop / Zero Install
GPG: 9242 9807 C985 3C07 44A6  8B9A AE07 8280 59A5 3CC1
GPG: DA98 25AE CAD0 8975 7CDA  BD8E 0713 3F96 CA74 D8BA