install-it

a hopefully usefull and mostly generic installer for KDE extensions

Requirements

This shall do the job if used via Dolphin Settings / Configure Dolphin and(!) if downloaded to some place.

As this shall be able to install files around the HOME place ... the only valid place to build the archives simply is .. tada .. $HOME.

Nice side effect is ... if the user opens the downloaded archive in ark, she will have a immediate impression of where these files will go.

This makes use of a gzipped tar file containing ME and a gzipped tar archive containing the files to install. so basicly this runs down to extracting the tar file to a proper place.

To keep the creation of the distributable tar archive separated .. we might create this inside a directory in parallel to the installation directory e.g. (for Service Menus: this is the installation directory: ~/.local/share/servicemenu-download so i can go here: ~/.local/share/servicemenu-build

Other extensions than service menus

This might serve solid actions and plasmoids as well, as these go to:

~/.local/share/solid/actions/
~/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids/

Said That..

quick and rough approach to something like a documentation...

Basic Idea

install.sh shall be an agnostic installer for KDE extensions. it makes use of:

• a so called base directory used to build and extract the install PACKAGE from within
• one gzipped tar archive containing files with a fixed location
• an optional gzipped tar archive containing user modifyable files (will not overwrite on updates)
• a shell script that extracts this/these tar archive(s) (also serving --uninstall)
• uninstall.sh might exist as a symlink to install.sh
• an extra shell script that performs "variable" actions as installing "binaries" (optional)
• to serve KDEs extension platform the whole thing is packed as another tar archive

Components

# install base dir is either system wide or personaly...
$ base_dir_root="/usr"          # this is risky business
$ base_dir_user="$HOME/.local"  # outbreaks from here with install-extras.sh only
$ BASE_INSTALL_DIR="$base_dir_user"

# creating the archive with
$ tar --directory="$BASE_INSTALL_DIR" --create --verbose --gzip \
  --file install-update.tar.gz <files ...>

# or (reading a files list from a file)
$ tar --directory="$BASE_INSTALL_DIR" --create --verbose --gzip \
  --file install-update.tar.gz --files-from=<files-to-install-seen-from-BASE_INSTALL_DIR-list>

a real world scenario

with having hello-world.desktop and hello-world.sh

in ./local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/ ...

Commands...

# 1 - define a package name (do not use spaces here)
PACKAGE='hello-world'

# 2 - archives used herein
INSTALL_UPDATE_TAR_GZ="install-update.tar.gz"
INSTALL_PROTECT_TAR_GZ="install-protect.tar.gz"
PACKAGE_TAR_GZ="$PACKAGE.tar.gz"

# 3 - just to keep things separated we create and use a "build" directory
BUILD_DIR="$HOME/.local/kde-store-build"
test -d "$BUILD_DIR" || mkdir "$BUILD_DIR"

# 4 - from here we go...
BASE_INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/.local"
cd "$BASE_INSTALL_DIR"

# 5 - having `hello-world.desktop` and `hello-world.sh`
#     in `kservices5/ServiceMenus/` (or in upstream `kio/servicemenus/`) ...
find ./share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/ -name 'hello-world.*' \
  > $BUILD_DIR/$PACKAGE.files

# 6 - switch to build dir now
cd "$BUILD_DIR"

# 7 (a) - and get install file from github or elsewhere
test -f install.sh && rm install.sh
test -f uninstall.sh && rm uninstall.sh
wget \
  "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/c-hartmann/kde-install.sh/main/install.sh"

# 7 (b) create a symlink for the uninstall script
#      (needs further investigation:
#       in tests it seems, that dolphin (i.e. /usr/bin/servicemenuinstaller)
#       fails on symlinks, but not on "real" files). (hard links work)
#      if uninstall.sh is not present at all, servicemenuinstaller
#      will try install.sh --uninstall to the rescue.
#      see the source:
#      https://github.com/KDE/dolphin/blob/master/src/settings/contextmenu/\
#         servicemenuinstaller/servicemenuinstaller.cpp  (~ line 382, 390)
#      if uninstall.sh exists as a symlink to install.sh, uninstall.sh is not
#      being run, instead install.sh *without* arguments is started.
#      without any knowledge of cpp, it seems to boil down to the usage of
#      QFileInfo::canonicalFilePath() in the source. QFileInfo::absoluteFilePath()
#      instead likely would return the name of the symlink itself.
#      test it yourself with:
#      /usr/bin/servicemenuinstaller install <path to hello-world.tar.gz>
#      /usr/bin/servicemenuinstaller uninstall <path to hello-world.tar.gz>
#
# ln -sf install.sh uninstall.sh    # not functional due to description above
# ln -f install.sh uninstall.sh     # functional but considered to be not transparent

# 8 - create archive containing files to be installed on target system
tar \
  --create --verbose --gzip \
  --directory="$BASE_INSTALL_DIR" \
  --file "$INSTALL_UPDATE_TAR_GZ" \
  --files-from=$PACKAGE.files

# 9 - create archive to distribute to store.kde.org
tar \
  --create --verbose --gzip \
  --file $PACKAGE_TAR_GZ \
  ./install.sh ./uninstall.sh \
  ./$INSTALL_UPDATE_TAR_GZ

(or) with the friendly help of make(1)

# 1-6 as above

# 7
wget \
  "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/c-hartmann/kde-install.sh/main/Makefile"
make PACKAGE=hello-world

Installation (in principal)

this is in principal what (f.i.) dolphin does on installation

# working directory is...
SERVICE_MENU_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/.local/share/servicemenu-download/"
test -d $SERVICE_MENU_DOWNLOAD_DIR || mkdir $SERVICE_MENU_DOWNLOAD_DIR
cd $SERVICE_MENU_DOWNLOAD_DIR

# getting the install from store.kde.org (unsufficient! > 404)
wget https://www.pling.com/dl?...file_name=hello-world.tar.gz -O hello-world.tar.gz

# create and use a directory to extract archive, run install.sh
mkdir hello-world.tar.gz-dir
cd hello-world.tar.gz-dir
tar --extract --verbose --file ../hello-world.tar.gz
chmod +x install.sh # may be this?
source install.sh