(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Dear developers,

I am now a bit confused about the relation between dotpup and PET. could any one kindly give me a very simple idea on these two ? how these two are related with each other ?
thanks

.pup is basically a renamed tar file that unzips when you click on it
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/DotPup

.pet (Puppy Extra Treats) does more; it puts an entry in the menu, can register for uninstallation in the package manager and checks for required dependencies

Pups are "active" and easily could mess up things by their inbuilt scripts, while pets are "passive".
Pups can offer you dialogs to where to install them, and so you will not be able to install them in the console.
Pets install to a fixed location. They have no dialogs, and so can also be installed without X.
Pups add entries to each single Desktop by writing in their config files (risking to break them), while .pets can use XDG-menus only (passive resourcefiles).

Pets are more "robust", but less flexible.
They use the strict "guidelines" of creating alien packages, so they even can be installed without X.
Dotpups can include many custom "features", so my dotpup-wizard adds things like a percentage-bar, to display how far the installation already finished.
But the percentage bar needs X, so dotpups created with that wizard cannot be installed without X.

Ok, thanks a lot for your guidance.
I think I should go for pet then to create packages for my customized puppy.

see you

Just forgot to ask, what about the debian packages ? it is also possible to create puppy packages from .deb but does it really work ? if yes then the thing will be more simpler for me as being a debian .

And how can I create a package from its source for puppy ?

So much to learn .....

To create a package from source in puppy, you need to have the development squashfs for your particular pupversion. e.g. if you're using pup3.01, you need to download devx_301.sfs from the puppy ibiblio repository, and save this in /mnt/home directory.

Then it's a matter of unpacking your source archive, changing to the resultant directory, called say /xxx, then:

./configure
make
new2dir make install
cd ..
dir2pet /xxx-i486

Or, if you have an already compiled .deb package which is library compatible with your pupversion, then it's a simple matter to unpack the .deb with undeb, then repackage it as a .pet.

Joydeep wrote:Just forgot to ask, what about the debian packages ? it is also possible to create puppy packages from .deb but does it really work ? if yes then the thing will be more simpler for me as being a debian .

And how can I create a package from its source for puppy ?

So much to learn .....

here read the manual on puppy it really does break the ice. http://www.puppy-linux.info/en/manual/main.html
also try the puppy linux chat #puppylinux using freenode eg,gaim,pidgin,xchat etc or go here if you have java http://java.freenode.net//index.php?channel=puppylinux

plus if you search this forum you'll find just about every answer you ever wanted about puppy,

have fun ttuuxxx

Many thanks to all of you for your kind suggestions.
with best wishes

So confusion between Pet and dot pup has been resolved with the help of the community.
Now one more confusion in my mind. What is the utility of puppy unleashed ? Hope this time some one kindly help me to understand this too.
thanks for the great community support

Also, while being more general & not specifically related to your unleashed query, I'd highly recommend these sites, for anyone wanting to know more about puppy:

http://www.puppy-linux.info/

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HowToUsePuppy

http://rhinoweb.us/

muggins wrote:http://puppylinux.com/puppy-unleashed.htm

As per my understanding it is a foundation with lots of packages where you have to just select the packages you like in your distro and then make your own puppy. If the required package is already not there then the pet maker script comes in the role to make a puppy package from the source. Hope my though is correct. what do you think ?

again thanks for the GREAT community support.

I don't mean to threadjack here, but if tgz2pet is used on any old *.tar.gz or *.tgz I find on the 'net (no modifications), and the resulting *.pet is installed, can all of its components be uninstalled correctly just using the package manager?

That has been my experience thus far.

Unless it overwrites already-present things, in which case, after uninstalling, those things will be gone too.

Lobster missed a detail or three on .pup. They're actually a .zip, not a .tar. Within that .zip can be pretty much anything, but it's almost always a .tar.gz file. I've seen some .tar.bz2 files though, and also some that just had a script.

Also, .pup files can make use of the XDG menu system. However, most of the dotpups already out there are from before we had XDG, so they try editing the menus. Also, the dotpup creator program was also from back then, though you could work around that by telling it not to add a menu item, then just including the xxxx.desktop entry needed by XDG.

Finally, a .pup can register to PETget too, and many do. However, it's less reliable because each individual .pup has to do it itself, whereas with PETget, the PETget program does it.


Generally, it's best to use PETget for packages. Dotpup is better for the more oddball packages that take fancy install scripts. PETget can actually include an install script, but it's best to not use one whenever possible, because unless you know what you're doing, that install script could make the PETget package incompatible with Unleashed. One of the big advantages of PETget, from the developer's standpoint, is that as long as the creator of a PETget package doesn't do anything stupid like having unnecessary install scripts, the PETget package can be directly used in an Unleashed tree, with the only modification being to decompress and extract it. With a dotpup, you'd have to do much more work to get things organized correctly.