Publishing packages/installers for Gemini browsers

1. Dave Huseby (dwh (a) vi.rs)

Long time listener, first time caller...

I just stood up my own Gemini space to publish my writing on user 
sovereignty, decentralization and privacy. You can find it here: 
gemini://vi.rs  I'm using Let's Encrypt TLS certs with a modified Pollux. 
I've been watching the Gemini project for months now and I like where it 
is headed. I chose to publish using only Gemini because it is the closest 
user-sovereign publishing system we have ATM.

The only problem now is that lots of people have asked me what they can 
download and run to read my Gemini "mission log". There aren't any 
precompiled packages or installers so I've been having them ssh to kiosk 
to run the VP client. Is anybody planning to publish packages/installers 
anytime soon? I've had several thousand hits on my Gemini space in the 
last couple of days despite the hurdles for getting onto Gemini. Castor is 
hosted on sr.ht that has CI capabilities. I'm familiar with setting up CI 
builds on Github but not on sr.ht. Does anybody know how to set that up 
and is willing to send a patch to the maintainer of Castor?

Cheers!
Dave

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2. Steve Ryan (stryan (a) saintnet.tech)

On 20/05/07 03:24PM, Dave Huseby wrote:
> Long time listener, first time caller...
> 
> I just stood up my own Gemini space to publish my writing on user 
sovereignty, decentralization and privacy. You can find it here: 
gemini://vi.rs  I'm using Let's Encrypt TLS certs with a modified Pollux. 
I've been watching the Gemini project for months now and I like where it 
is headed. I chose to publish using only Gemini because it is the closest 
user-sovereign publishing system we have ATM.
> 
> The only problem now is that lots of people have asked me what they can 
download and run to read my Gemini "mission log". There aren't any 
precompiled packages or installers so I've been having them ssh to kiosk 
to run the VP client. Is anybody planning to publish packages/installers 
anytime soon? I've had several thousand hits on my Gemini space in the 
last couple of days despite the hurdles for getting onto Gemini. Castor is 
hosted on sr.ht that has CI capabilities. I'm familiar with setting up CI 
builds on Github but not on sr.ht. Does anybody know how to set that up 
and is willing to send a patch to the maintainer of Castor?
> 
> Cheers!
> Dave

Can't answer your specific question since I've only written a server not
a client, but I figured I'd chime in.

I'm somewhat familiar with packaging stuff using OpenSuse's OpenBuildSystem
which can spit out rpms, debs, etc pretty easily. If anyone wants their
client/server packaged but doesn't know how I'm more than happy to help
out and get that ball rolling.

-Steve

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3. Dominik Dalek (dominik.dalek (a) thaumatec.com)

Howdy!

FWIW I had a very pleasant experience with Asuka client. It has no package
available for download but it's in Rust and can be built by a relatively
unskilled person. Some documentation on how one would build it is missing
but I'm sure this is something that can be remedied without much effort.

Instruction pretty much boils down to:
1. Run rustup
2. Get the code
3. Run cargo build
4. Done.

The undocumented part is between 2 and 3:


But yeah, in an ideal world there would be a package ready for download.

-Dom

On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 12:25 AM Dave Huseby <dwh at vi.rs> wrote:
>
> Long time listener, first time caller...
>
> I just stood up my own Gemini space to publish my writing on user 
sovereignty, decentralization and privacy. You can find it here: 
gemini://vi.rs  I'm using Let's Encrypt TLS certs with a modified Pollux. 
I've been watching the Gemini project for months now and I like where it 
is headed. I chose to publish using only Gemini because it is the closest 
user-sovereign publishing system we have ATM.
>
> The only problem now is that lots of people have asked me what they can 
download and run to read my Gemini "mission log". There aren't any 
precompiled packages or installers so I've been having them ssh to kiosk 
to run the VP client. Is anybody planning to publish packages/installers 
anytime soon? I've had several thousand hits on my Gemini space in the 
last couple of days despite the hurdles for getting onto Gemini. Castor is 
hosted on sr.ht that has CI capabilities. I'm familiar with setting up CI 
builds on Github but not on sr.ht. Does anybody know how to set that up 
and is willing to send a patch to the maintainer of Castor?
>
> Cheers!
> Dave



-- 
Dominik Dalek, Software Engineer
Thaumatec Sp. z o.o.
ul. Mickiewicza 20c, 51-619 Wroclaw

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4. Julien Blanchard (julien (a) typed-hole.org)

On 5/8/20 12:24 AM, Dave Huseby wrote:

> You can find it here: gemini://vi.rs  I'm using Let's Encrypt TLS certs 
with a modified Pollux.
Cool place! Funny to see someone using Pollux besides me!
> Castor is hosted on sr.ht that has CI capabilities. I'm familiar with 
setting up CI builds on Github but not on sr.ht. Does anybody know how to 
set that up and is willing to send a patch to the maintainer of Castor?

I'm the maintainer of Asuka and Castor. Providing packages is something 
I definitely want to do. I'll be looking into OpenBuildSystem this looks 
very neat!

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5. solderpunk (solderpunk (a) SDF.ORG)

Hi Dave,

This is a good point to raise.  I guess prior to the recent influx of
interest from Hacker News and other places, we've been able to somewhat
ignore this, because most of the consumers of Gemini content have also
been active community members who have the skills, interest and time to
get their client(s) of choice up and running.  But lowering the barrier
to entry will be important for wider adoption.

I can't promise anything, but I'll make an effort to push out a 1.0.0
release of AV-98 tomorrow (cue anguished cries from people in
Gopherspace who have been waiting years for a 1.0.0 release of VF-1!),
and as part of that I'll upload it to PyPI - that means a simple `pip
install` will be able to get people started.  Admittedly a command-line
client isn't going to be an easy intro for a lot of people, but it will
work for many, and to be honest I'm not sure the project is necessarily
ready for thousands of new users in a short time span yet.  But some
extra energy - and especially content! - would definitely be very
welcome.

Cheers,
Solderpunk


On Thu, May 07, 2020 at 03:24:32PM -0700, Dave Huseby wrote:
> Long time listener, first time caller...
> 
> I just stood up my own Gemini space to publish my writing on user 
sovereignty, decentralization and privacy. You can find it here: 
gemini://vi.rs  I'm using Let's Encrypt TLS certs with a modified Pollux. 
I've been watching the Gemini project for months now and I like where it 
is headed. I chose to publish using only Gemini because it is the closest 
user-sovereign publishing system we have ATM.
> 
> The only problem now is that lots of people have asked me what they can 
download and run to read my Gemini "mission log". There aren't any 
precompiled packages or installers so I've been having them ssh to kiosk 
to run the VP client. Is anybody planning to publish packages/installers 
anytime soon? I've had several thousand hits on my Gemini space in the 
last couple of days despite the hurdles for getting onto Gemini. Castor is 
hosted on sr.ht that has CI capabilities. I'm familiar with setting up CI 
builds on Github but not on sr.ht. Does anybody know how to set that up 
and is willing to send a patch to the maintainer of Castor?
> 
> Cheers!
> Dave

Link to individual message.

6. Brian Evans (b__m__e (a) mailfence.com)

Hi Dave,
Funny to see this on the mailing list this morning as I was reading 
through your work just last night. Really great stuff!

I cannot speak for the other client maintainers, but I can give some info 
for my client (Bombadillo):

All major and minor versions, but not patch versions, are available as 
pre-compiled binaries from the website or gopher 
(bombadillo.colorfield.space in either case), for Linux-32, Linux-64, 
OSX-64, and I believe we have a BSD build up as well but do not quote me 
on that (we do not support Windows at present).

I was told someone has a build up in the Arch AUR as well. I am not an 
Arch user and have not been able to verify what version they are at or if 
they are actively maintaining it.

I would love to see it packaged for other distros. Steve, in a response to 
the OP, mentions OpenSuse having a good build system. I may have to look 
into that. I'm not sure I have the time to devote to maintaining the 
codebase as well as packaging for multiple distros, but I'd definitely 
give it a try for at least Debian. I may wait until the next minor release 
as I have some gemini-specific improvements that should be releasing in 
the near future. I'd love any advice people have re: packaging as I am 
very new to trying to do so (I usually just build everything from source when possible).

As far as building goes, for those users with the desire to try, 
Bombadillo will compile with a Go compiler for 1.11 or newer. It uses no 
packages outside of the standard library and comes with a makefile (sudo 
make install, and you should be good to go).

--?
Sent with https://mailfence.com
Secure and private email

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7. plugd (plugd (a) thelambdalab.xyz)




Dave Huseby writes:

> Long time listener, first time caller...
>
> I just stood up my own Gemini space to publish my writing on user 
sovereignty, decentralization and privacy. You can find it here: 
gemini://vi.rs  I'm using Let's Encrypt TLS certs with a modified Pollux. 
I've been watching the Gemini project for months now and I like where it 
is headed. I chose to publish using only Gemini because it is the closest 
user-sovereign publishing system we have ATM.
>
> The only problem now is that lots of people have asked me what they can 
download and run to read my Gemini "mission log". There aren't any 
precompiled packages or installers so I've been having them ssh to kiosk 
to run the VP client. Is anybody planning to publish packages/installers 
anytime soon? I've had several thousand hits on my Gemini space in the 
last couple of days despite the hurdles for getting onto Gemini. Castor is 
hosted on sr.ht that has CI capabilities. I'm familiar with setting up CI 
builds on Github but not on sr.ht. Does anybody know how to set that up 
and is willing to send a patch to the maintainer of Castor?
>
> Cheers!
> Dave

Link to individual message.

8. plugd (plugd (a) thelambdalab.xyz)


Hi Dave,

Dave Huseby writes:
> Is anybody planning to publish packages/installers anytime soon?

For what it's worth, my emacs-based client elpher is available from the
MELPA repository.  So, for emacs users at least, installation is as
simple as "M-x package-install RET elpher RET".

Cheers,

Tim
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9. Katarina Eriksson (gmym (a) coopdot.com)

Hello, I got here from Hacker News in the beginning of the month.

Brian Evans <b__m__e at mailfence.com> wrote:

> I was told someone has a build up in the Arch AUR as well. I am not an
> Arch user and have not been able to verify what version they are at or if
> they are actively maintaining it.
>

The package in the Arch User Repository has not been updated since it was
first submitted. I installed bombadillo that way on my laptop just now and
it was painless for an AUR package. It didn't like my server's certificate,
but other servers were fine.

The package details:

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/bombadillo-git

-- 
Katarina

>
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10. colecmac (a) protonmail.com (colecmac (a) protonmail.com)

> The package in the Arch User Repository has not been updated since it 
was first submitted

Just to clarify, the AUR pkg that's been linked is a git package, which 
means that it just pulls from git everytime you install or update it. So 
it's okay that it "hasn't been updated".


makeworld

??????? Original Message ???????
On Monday, May 11, 2020 1:15 PM, Katarina Eriksson <gmym at coopdot.com> wrote:

> Hello, I got here from Hacker News in the beginning of the month.
>
> Brian Evans <b__m__e at mailfence.com> wrote:
>
> > I was told someone has a build up in the Arch AUR as well. I am not an 
Arch user and have not been able to verify what version they are at or if 
they are actively maintaining it.
>
> The package in the Arch User Repository has not been updated since it 
was first submitted. I installed bombadillo that way on my laptop just now 
and it was painless for an AUR package. It didn't like my server's 
certificate, but other servers were fine.
>
> The package details:
>
> https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/bombadillo-git
>
> --?
> Katarina
>
> >

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11. Ivy Foster (escondida (a) iff.ink)

On 11 May 2020, at  7:15 pm +0200, Katarina Eriksson wrote:
> Brian Evans <b__m__e at mailfence.com> wrote:
> > I was told someone has a build up in the Arch AUR as well. I am not an
> > Arch user and have not been able to verify what version they are at or if
> > they are actively maintaining it.

> The package in the Arch User Repository has not been updated since it was
> first submitted. I installed bombadillo that way on my laptop just now and
> it was painless for an AUR package. It didn't like my server's certificate,
> but other servers were fine.

Hey, folks, I'm new here, too. Gemini seems awesome!

The way -git (and -hg, et al.) build scripts work in the AUR (which
doesn't contain any packages: it's a repository of build scripts you
can use to build Arch packages) is that the only time they need to get
updated on the site is if the build instructions change. When a user
builds the package with Arch's packaging tools, the latest git (or
whatever) is automagically fetched from the repository listed in the
$source variable in the PKGBUILD, and the version of their newly-built
local package is updated to reflect that.

Cheers,
Ivy

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