Christoph’s Blog

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screenshots.debian.net goes beta

with 10 comments

Roberto Sanchez and I proposed to create a service to provide screenshots for Debian packages. And with a little work, a lot of Pylons frameworking power and a tad of jQuery spice I created the ‘debexpo’ software that provides a nice-looking web site doing exactly that. The service is already up and running at screenshots.debian.net. This is still the phase where I have to sort out a few minor technical, legal and organisational issues. And thanks to a friendly fellow Pylons’ user I have now a place to host the service (my vpslink-sponsored server is already overloaded). Once all the subleties are sorted out I will announce the service to debian-devel-announce and hope to get mentioned in the weekly news.

Written by Christoph Haas

November 10th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

10 Responses to 'screenshots.debian.net goes beta'

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  1. [...] planet debian:  http://blog.workaround.org/2008/11/10/screenshotsdebiannet-goes-beta/ Tags: archivio, aspetto, Debian, gnu/linux, programmi, Repository, [...]

  2. Hi,

    is there a tool to show packages i got installed but dont have a screenshot online?

    thanks for the interesting project :)

    Florian

    Florian

    10 Nov 08 at 11:00 pm

  3. @Florian:

    That would be a nice idea. I could provide a list of packages on screenshots.debian.net as a plain text file. With a little shell trickery that should do what you ask for.

    I have to provide a list of packages without screenshots anyway. Currently my ORM (SQLAlchemy) is not listening to me properly so I need some investigation there.

    The “problem” is that non-free packages are legally not allowed to have screenshots. So that section would be excluded. And you probably don’t want to get a huge list of *-data packages and libraries either. But the idea is interesting.

    Christoph Haas

    10 Nov 08 at 11:13 pm

  4. I think a simple filter (ending on -dbg / -data or starting with lib) be applyed (also for the name suggestion when uploading)

    I had a good time using SQLAlchemy but didn’t use it for an actual project, just toying around - used elixir latly: less to write and still everything possible :) Hope you get your problems sorted out soon.

    If there is a list of pkgs that need a screenshot it shoulb be trivial to do the local checking.

    Thanks for your fast answer!

    Florian

    10 Nov 08 at 11:48 pm

  5. A point the guidelines doesn’t cover: How do you handle versioning? I was up to take a screenshot of gimp but realized I use the version out of experimental. I think saving the verion of the package would be a nice addition.

    PS sorry for spamming your blog.

    Florian

    11 Nov 08 at 12:16 am

  6. @Florian:

    Yes, that’s on my todo list. I was fixing bugs all day. But I will soon (1-2 days) implement that.

    Christoph Haas

    11 Nov 08 at 12:30 am

  7. [...] Haas a Roberto Sanchez společně vytvořili novou službu, která slouží k ukládání a prohlížení screenshotů pořízených z aplikací v balíčcích Debianu. Služba je již v betaprovozu a můžete si ji [...]

  8. How about adding links to the licensing boilerplate?

    These screenshots are licensed under the same terms[1] as ‘$package[2]‘ itself.

    Where [1] points to http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/b/package/current/copyright and [2] points to (say) http://packages.debian.org/src:package ?

    Damyan

    11 Nov 08 at 9:25 am

  9. This is a great idea! I’ve uploaded a few screenshots already :)

  10. Minor issue I know, but I personally would insert the ‘(just type the first letters)’ on the upload page using Javascript, since the autocomplete functionality won’t be available to users with Javascript disabled.

    Chris Butler

    11 Nov 08 at 4:26 pm

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