How to get SLAB working with SMART

If i had to name one thing that i sincerely hate about openSUSE, it’d have to be YaST’s package manager with its zypper backend, so, as you may have guessed from the title, i use Smart instead, and i don’t think i’m the only one here..

But alas, it had one major downside - it wasn’t integrated with SLAB’s (SUSE’s gnome main menu) package management feature, which enables you to uninstall or upgrade packages directly from the Application Browser. I still think it was a fair compromise though, anything that kept me from using that sadistic abomination of a package manager has always seemed like a plausible option regardless of the consequences. But that’s about to change, because i had finally came up with a 100% workable hack that will provide a fully integrated smart for SLAB - no compromises!

Disclaimer: I’m not trying to convince anyone to use smart instead of zypper, this howto is merely for people who are already using smart, and would like to get it working with SLAB, although the speed does improve drastically!

Now, there are two ways to do this, it’s up to you to choose which works for you best:

Before you start reading the howto, it’s important to know that i’ve made the following assumptions:

1- you have downloaded this file

2- you have smart and smart-gui packages installed (in opensuse)

3- you use smart as your main package manager.

4- you use a GNOME desktop, with SLAB main-menu.

5- you have basic knowledge of command line in linux.

are you good? OK, let’s start..

The Smart Way:

Step1: open a terminal and execute the following command: “cp /usr/bin/package-manager ~/” (without the quotes), this will save a copy of the file package-manager in your home directory, in case things got ugly.

Step2: untar (extract) the downloaded file either by executing ” tar -xzvf pckdmngr.tar.gz“, or using your favourite archiving software.

Step3: copy the file package-manager-smart to /usr/bin as root: “cp /PATH/TO/pckdmngr/package-manager-smart /usr/bin/“.

Step4: open gconf-editor, then expand it as follows: desktop > gnome > applications > main-menu

Step5: change the value of uninstall_package_command to “package-manager-smart –remove PACKAGE_NAME” (no quotes), and upgrade_package_command to “package-manager-smart –update PACKAGE_NAME“

Step6: Test it! By using this method, you always have the option of reverting it back to Yast by undoing Step5.

The Stupid Way:

Step1: open a terminal and execute “cp /usr/bin/package-manager ~/” this will save a copy of package-manager in your home directory, i can’t stress more on the importance of this step!

Step2: untar (extract) the downloaded file either by excuting ” tar -xzvf pckdmngr.tar.gz“, or using your favourite archiving software.

Step3: copy the file package-manager to /usr/bin as root: “cp -i /PATH/TO/pckdmngr/package-manager /usr/bin/“, this will overwrite the existing file, and everything should work right away..

Note: It is important to not copy the wrong files (as in copying package-manager-smart instead of package-manager or vice versa) because each hack is a tad different and will only work according to the steps explained above (fixed that), if anything goes wrong, use the backups, that’s why we made them in the first place.

Please send me feedbacks, i haven’t got the chance to test everything. also remember to “have a lot of fun…” =)