I made a thing! A simple app.

greenjeans · 2025-06-30 18:30:19

It's a simple app to list applications installed and a description and icon, also has a search function that starts working as soon as you start typing, it scrapes /usr/share/applications then cross-references that list with /var/lib/dpkg/status for the description. Simple but possibly useful to the new folks I convert to linux around my community to help get quickly oriented to apps they aren't familiar with.

The whole thing was undertaken as a learning experience for me, and boy was it a whale of an experience, I really have a fresh new perspective and respect for folks who do this stuff. Although i've written a lot of scriptlets for various things, this one has a number of firsts for me:
1. First standalone app with a real GUI
2. First time dabbling with C code and compiling it.
3. First time ever making a .deb package.

As usual there's always one thing I forgot, and that was to list the installed size, so i'll need to re-package at some point. It also still has a de-bugging log for now until I get it fully tested and tweaked. Installed size is tiny, about 53K and only needs yad and imagemagick for dependencies. I also include the raw C code in the package so folks can peruse that if they like.

I would be super grateful if anyone found time to take a few minutes and test. This is all part of my self education, I hope to learn more and more and get to the point where I can make some real contributions to Linux in general.

FYI the first time you run it, it has to run the scraper script first to create the database file, this takes some time, but subsequent openings of the app will be super fast as it just needs to run the GUI. Interesting part: On Mate the scraper takes a long time, in Openbox it takes about a third of that time, once again Openbox proves it's superiority.

Screenie: https://imgdump5.novarata.net/oxmy84.png

Link to package: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vuu-do … -App-Info/

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-06-30 18:38:28)

johnraff · 2025-07-01 07:05:27

Maybe you could post the source code somewhere?

brontosaurusrex · 2025-07-01 07:28:15

@johnraff, there is vai12.c and scrape12.sh packed in.
@greenjeans, interesting, thanks for sharing. I'am assuming bash script makes/scrapes the data available to some tmp file and the c thing that displays/builds the gui?

greenjeans · 2025-07-01 14:12:43

@brontosaurusrex; yep, the bash script is the scraper, it creates a file called scraped_apps.txt in the vai folder in ~/.local/share/vai which will be used as the database, this was simpler than using an sqlite db and no extra packages needed. It also (for now) creates a scrape_debug.log for troubleshooting any errors, it's probably not needed any more but I kept it in until I could get more eyes and testers on this.

There is also a wrapper script that initiates the whole thing, checks for the presence of scraped_apps.txt and if it doesn't exist, runs the scraper then starts the GUI, if it does exist it just fires up the GUI. That one is just using dash.

The GUI script is in binary, so I included the source C code for it in the package for folks to inspect, it's very small so no big deal adding it to the package, and it gives folks the option of messing with it themselves and re-compiling if they like. The scripts are obviously readable in a text editor, so the whole package and it's contents can be inspected before installing using your archive manager.

The wrapper script goes in /usr/local/bin, the other scripts go in a new folder that will be made ~/.local/share/vai , and the .desktop goes in ~/.local/share/applications, super simple, I didn't even make a custom icon, it just uses the "info" icon that's in every icon set, no man page either as it doesn't need one.

EDIT: As usual I forgot one tiny thing, and that was to include the installed size in the control, i'll re-package at some point and put that in there and remove the debug log. The .deb package is 14.4 kb, and installed size is about 53k. Very tiny and simple.

EDIT2: There's a thread I started after I got the first working prototype made that details a lot of the process of working out all the formatting and fixing bugs and details at : https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=7262

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-07-01 14:22:49)

GalacticStone · 2025-07-01 14:27:32

Sound interesting and useful. Got a screenshot of the GUI? I might give this a whirl when I get back from running errands.

greenjeans · 2025-07-01 14:56:24

GalacticStone wrote:

Sound interesting and useful. Got a screenshot of the GUI? I might give this a whirl when I get back from running errands.

Screenie link in the OP Here it is again: https://imgdump5.novarata.net/oxmy84.png

greenjeans · 2025-07-08 19:14:59

Updated version 3 uploaded yesterday, found a bug during testing, I had left some de-bugging content in there that shows when you run the GUI in terminal while I was working on it. Unfortunately I didn't think about diverting that content to a file somewhere, and it was dumping it all into ~/.xession-errors, and not actual errors as the script was working fine, just stuff the app was doing in the background. So that was annoying enough, but some of that content had special characters in it that made my text-editor think that file was now binary and so refused to open it. (good ol' Nano worked though, so I could see the problem).

Got it fixed and added a window icon to the main gui and some other tidying up. I also changed the format to a system-wide install instead of doing most of it in user-space, that was the intention all along but having everything in user-space as I worked on it just kept me from having to repeatedly edit files as root. Looking good now and haven't found any more bugs.

Heckuva learning experience! I have even more respect now for guys like Micko and John that do this sort of thing all the time, it takes a lot of time and there's a million little details to keep track of. Honestly I don't see how you do it, my brain feels like it ran 10 marathons back-to-back.

greenjeans · 2025-07-09 20:39:32

Version 4 uploaded.

No bugs, just moved some files around to comply with Debian's FHS policy, added a readme in /usr/share/vai with some info, and cleaned up some superfluous code in the postisnt script in the .deb package. Looking great!

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-07-09 20:39:50)

#1 2025-06-30 18:30:19

I made a thing! A simple app.

#2 2025-07-01 07:05:27

Re: I made a thing! A simple app.

#3 2025-07-01 07:28:15

Re: I made a thing! A simple app.

#4 2025-07-01 14:12:43

Re: I made a thing! A simple app.

#5 2025-07-01 14:27:32

Re: I made a thing! A simple app.

#6 2025-07-01 14:56:24

Re: I made a thing! A simple app.

#7 2025-07-08 19:14:59

Re: I made a thing! A simple app.

#8 2025-07-09 20:39:32

Re: I made a thing! A simple app.

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