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Kpackage has two panels. The left panel displays a tree of the installed packages, the left panel displays information on the installed packages.
Kpackage makes use of the KDE Drag and Drop protocol. This means that you can drag and drop packages onto Kpackage to open them. Dropping a file onto the "Find File" dialog will find the package that contains the file.
When Kpackage is started normally (that is it has not been invoked via drag and drop and has not been given any parameters) it displays two panels with the package tree on the left, this tree shows installed packages and optionally uninstalled and updating packages as well.
The package tree show the package name, package size, the version and in the case of uninstalled packages that would update an installed package the version of the installed package.
Kpackage can deal with collections of uninstalled packages from RPM or Debian distributions.
For RPM packages Kpackage can read a directory containing packages and add these to the package tree as either new or updated packages. It is possible to examine or install these packages from the package tree. By default the information about the packages is extracted from the standard format of the file names and so it is necessary to use the "Examine" button in Single select mode to see the full description, it is possible though to set an option so that for local directories each package file is read, this is slower but gives a full description.
For Debian packages packages directories can be handled in the same way as with RPM packages but it is also possible to use the Packages files that provide the directories for Debian distributions. The location of the the Debian distribution is specified along with the Packages files for the parts of the distribution that are of interest, those packages are then added to the package tree and can be examined or installed. If "dselect" program is being used then the file /var/lib/dpkg/available can be used as a Packages file that describes the distribution that dselect uses.
For Slackware packages there is very little information stored on installed
packages, but it is possible to use a PACKAGE.TXT file as a source of
information about the installed packages. The PACKAGES.TXT file is the
equivalent of a Debian Packages file and Slackware distributions are structured
with a directory tree containing the .tgz
packages and a PACKAGES.TXT
file that describes the packages. As with Debian distributions the packages in a
Slackware distribution can be integrated into the package tree. Unfortunately
the Slackware packages don't carry version information so it is not possible to
tell with uninstalled packages are newer than installed ones.
For remote directories and package files (i.e. those fetched via FTP) Kpackage
will do caching, the packages are cached in ~/.kpackage
and the
directories in ~/.kpackage/dir
NOTE: for the handling of remote (FTP) directories to work KFM must not have the "FTP Proxy" set. in the Browser Settings.
To install a package you can
In Single select mode the Examine button will open the package file (fetching it from a remote source if necessary) and display install options on the left panel and package information on the right panel.
In Multiple select mode the Install button pop up a dialog of install options, when install is selected in this dialog any remote packages are fetched and then all the selected packages are installed.
RPM and Debian packages are handled slightly differently, RPM pages are installed by the Kpackage program while with Debian packages the DPKG utility is invoked in a KVT window (this allows interaction if required).
Packages can be uninstalled but selecting them in the package tree and using the Uninstall button, this brings up a popup with the uninstall options, the Uninstall button in the popup causes the packages to be uninstalled.
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