Anyone made a PKGBUILD for Arch Linux?

jamesi

I need to install OpenSesame on an Arch Linux machine. I've considered the option of just using pip, but not very keen on the use of such an insecure repository, so I'm thinking of building from source. I thought I'd check here if a PKGBUILD file already exists somewhere.

cvanbuck

Hi @jamesi,

There isn’t a PKGBUILD file for OpenSesame that we're aware of at the moment. If you prefer not to use pip, building from source is a good option. You can find the source code and build instructions on the OpenSesame GitHub repository.

Best of luck with the installation!

Claire

jamesi

Unless I'm missing something I don't see any build instructions in the Git repository. It's why I wondered about how it was normally built.

I'm using this https://github.com/open-cogsci/OpenSesame

Normally I'd expect the basic build instructions (dependencies etc.)...

I could assume...

$ ./configure
$ make
# make install

... but I don't even see the cmake/src directories I'm used to. I don't have much experience with this, but I can build a 'standard' package so if I'm just looking in the wrong place...

sebastiaan

Hi @jamesi ,

Thanks for your willingness to contribute! 😊 Just to chip in. OpenSesame is a Python application, which (unlike for example a C application) doesn't need to be compiled, which is what the standard configure-make procedure does.

Instead, a Python application (usually) consists of scripts that simply need to be copied to the right location, and the right dependencies need to be installed as well. OpenSesame uses a pyproject.toml in combination with Poetry for this purpose. However, if you were to package this for Arch, you'd probably do this indirectly based off the wheel packages on PyPi.

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Python_package_guidelines

To complicate matters, OpenSesame has a lot of dependencies that would probably also need to be packaged. These dependencies are updated regularly and separately, so this means that keeping the Arch packages up to date would be an ongoing process.

If you want to help packaging for Linux—which would be much appreciated!—building Arch-specific packages is likely not the most efficient route, because it is quite a bit of sustained effort for a relatively small group of users. You could also consider building a flatpak package. Such a package doesn't exit either, and that way the entire Linux community would benefit.

— Sebastiaan

jamesi

@sebastiaan ,

Thanks for the info. I was wondering why no-one had packaged it, I can see how keeping up with dependencies would be difficult.

I know people are a little wary of using PyPi on rolling releases like Arch as dependency versions can quickly get out of hand. A flatpak would certainly be a good solution.

I've no experience with building flatpaks, but then I'm always keen to learn something new, so I'll have a play around with it and if it seems to work, then that's one more way to download...

Thanks for maintaining yet another great open source project, hope I can help in some small way.