A few questions...

[Ireclan]

Well, I have made the decision to try and become a PBI developer. I read the read me included with PBI Creator, and I have some questions.

1. The first step appears to be rounding up all files needed for the program to work. Where do I obtain these files?

2. Do I need to know any scripting language to create PBIs?

3. What goes in the 'Website' field of the first screen of the PBI creator?

4. I read in the help file about PBIs having the ability to update themselves, if the creator so wishes it. I don't fully understand this. It appears that some sort of script is needed...

5. About the PBI update process....Can a browser other than Konqueror be used for letting the user obtain the actual update?

6. I don't understand the whole 'library' business. What does 'populating a library' mean?

These are only some of the questions I had, but we'll start with these. I look forward to contributing!

[Hlebarkata_321]

1.Try it the FreeBSD pre-compiled packages at http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html or Ports
2.It´s not 100% necassary but you should know some bash commands and how kdialog works
3.The Homepage of the Program
4.Yes, If there is Wine 0.9.11 on your system it and you install 0.9.41 it should update automatically
5.Just don´t know what you mean
6.I think you mean autopuopulating . If you didn´t include a lib directory choose this!

[antik]

5. About the PBI update process....Can a browser other than Konqueror be used for letting the user obtain the actual update?

'

Downloading update is done on background with fetch program IIRC.

[Ireclan]

OK. I figure the best way for me to learn package creation is probably to dive in head first. So, what package should I make first? What do you guys feel would make a good first choice?

[Hlebarkata_321]

The easiest is install All Codecs and Remake it 8)

[nowax]

The easiest is install All Codecs and Remake it 8)

And maybe check if any new codecs are available and then remake it

[Ireclan]

OK....What I need to do is download the 'All Codecs' PBI, figure out what makes it tick, then duplicate it (with any new codecs, of course)? Is that right? If so, how will I know what files the PBI installs, what changes it makes...?

I really am a newbie, if you know what I mean... ops:

[Hlebarkata_321]

Download all codecs (if it's allowed in your country) from http://www.pbis.in and install it. Copy the contents of /Programs/Allcodecs to somewhere in your home directory. And now....
first try to learn how it works and so on. All Files to remakle it are just included. And look at the PBI.Remove/setup.sh script files and understand how they works! Also have a look at the scipts from some package using Kdialog like torcs. 8) edit: Oh I forgot also that: http://faqs.pcbsd.org/19_317_en.html

[Ireclan]

OK. I can see that for things to become crystal clear, the only thing to be done is to try to do it myself. Therefore, I'll download the 'All Codecs' PBI this evening and start digging around to see what makes all the magic. Thankyou for attempting to answer my questions, guys!

[TerryP]

If you need to learn a few useful tools (e.g. sh, kdialog e.t.c.) some of the links on this page may help.


All you really need to know is the basic commands for copying, moving, removing, and linking files around from the command line (cp, rm, mv, ln). The PBI.*.sh files are just like typing commands into the prompt for the 'sh' shell. Wikpiedia is a good starting point.

Knowing a little about using the shell, wild cards, and quoting (especially * and '') is good and learning simple programing constructs such as 'if elif else' and for loops can save you a lot of typing. When you want or need to do more complex things. But you don't have to learn them in order to make a decent PBI.


A Library is a file that provides additional stuff to an executable that it needs to run but without making for a large exe. So the exe won't run correctly without the libraries but the library makes the exe file smaller. And many programs can use the same 'stuff' in the libraries very effectively that way.


A windows like visuation.
notepad.exe, size 1mb -- requires 'string.dll' to run
wordpad.exe, size 4mb -- requires 'string.dll' to run
string.dll, size 8mb

If the code in string.dll was in both .exe files, they would be a lot larger but wouldn't require string.dll to run. If string.dll is updated all the .exe requiring the file to run benefit from it without being updated themselves. But those that had it 'built in' would not. Thats a nice nutshell explanation imho.