[PC-BSD Pbi-dev] New PBI Features

[Kris Moore]

Fellas,

No doubt many of you have now seen the new PBI Creator 3.1 version, and 
the new -extract feature thats available in it. This will let you easily 
fix PBIs, or even upgrade them to a newer version of the PBI format, 
even if you didn't keep your original PBI directory. As matter a fact, 
upgrading a PBI to a new version, would be as simple as this:

# ./<pbi> -extract
# PBC -create <pbcfile>

I'm working hard at the moment on ISO creation, and once thats finished, 
I want to add a bit more to the PBI creator still. Here's a list of 
things Charles brought to my attention. Do these sound good to you guys?

http://bugs.pcbsd.org/bug.php?op=show&bugid=69
http://bugs.pcbsd.org/bug.php?op=show&bugid=88
http://bugs.pcbsd.org/bug.php?op=show&bugid=107
http://bugs.pcbsd.org/bug.php?op=show&bugid=121
http://bugs.pcbsd.org/bug.php?op=show&bugid=295
http://bugs.pcbsd.org/bug.php?op=show&bugid=336
http://bugs.pcbsd.org/bug.php?op=show&bugid=424


One other thing I want to add, is improving the scripting support within 
PBI's. For example, instead of you only having ${1} and ${2} for the 
program directory, and username respectively, I was thinking about 
adding other variables as well. Maybe some things like this:

USERNAME="kris"   # Username of the person doing the install
PROGDIR="/Programs/MyApp"  # Where the program is going to be installed
INSTALLMODE="GUI" # If the installer is running in TEXT or GUI
GUIPID="<num>"    # The PID of the PBI installer, useful for kdialog


Those are the initial variables I'm thinking of at the moment. If I get 
even more ambitious, I may even be able to allow the PBI creator to 
define their own "customized" wizard page, where you can have text, and 
any checkboxes / questions you may need for your program, and then the 
values of the user responses get passed back into your 
PBI.SetupScript.sh. I'll have to give it some thought, to come up with a 
API for allowing that, but before I do, would that seem to be of value 
to you guys?



-- 

Kris Moore
PC-BSD Software
http://www.pcbsd.com