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  <title>Debreate - Debian Package Builder</title>
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      <span>Debreate - Debian Package Builder</span>
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    <div class="box flex-col" id="toc">
      <h1 class="header">Contents</h1>
      <ul>
        <li><a href="#notice">Notice</a></li>
        <li><a href="#description">Description</a></li>
        <li><a href="#licensing">Licensing</a></li>
        <li><a href="#starting">Starting Debreate</a></li>
        <li><a href="#notes">Notes</a></li>
        <ul>
          <li><a href="#wxpython-compat">wxPython Compatibility</a></li>
          <li><a href="#non-debian">Using on Non-Debian Systems</a></li>
        </ul>
        <li><a href="#links">Navigation, Links, &amp; Downloads</a></li>
      </ul>
    </div>

    <div class="box flex-col" id="notice">
      <h1 class="header"><a href="#toc">Notice</a></h1>
      <p><em>
        The software is in a state of revival. The old versions that are labelled as "stable" do
        not work well on modern operating systems. It is recommended to use a development version,
        however it is still under heavy testing &amp;
        <a href="https://github.com/debreate/debreate/blob/master/BUGS.txt">may contain bugs</a>.
      </em></p>
    </div>

    <div class="box flex-col" id="description">
      <h1 class="header"><a href="#toc">Description</a></h1>
      <p>
        Debreate is a utility to aid in creating installable
        <a href="https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_(file_format)">Debian (.deb)</a> packages.
      </p>

      <p>
        The goal behind the project is to make developing for Debian based Linux distributions more
        appealing, with an easy to use interface for packaging applications, artwork, media, themes,
        etc.
      </p>

      <p>
        Currently, it only supports "binary" packaging which allows anything that does not require
        being compiled from source, such as scripted applications or media. These packages can then
        be used for personal distribution. Plans for using backends such as
        <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/debian/dh-make">dh_make</a> &amp; debuild (available in
        <a href="https://packages.ubuntu.com/devscripts">devscripts package</a>) for creating source packages
        are in the works. But source packaging can be quite different &amp; is a must if you want to
        get your packages into a distribution's official repositories or a
        <a href="https://launchpad.net/">Launchpad</a>
        <a href="https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Package_Archives">
        Personal Package Archive (PPA)</a>.
      </p>
    </div>

    <div class="box flex-col" id="licensing">
      <h1 class="header"><a href="#toc">Licensing</a></h1>
      <p>
        Debreate &amp; libdbr are licensed under <a href="LICENSE.txt">MIT</a>.
      </p>
    </div>

    <div class="box flex-col" id="starting">
      <h1><a href="#toc">Starting Debreate (0.8 development versions)</a></h1>
      <p>
        If you installed Debreate through a package manager or using the supplied .deb package,
        there will be an icon in your system's menu. If you downloaded the portable .zip or source
        package, just execute the file named <tt>init.py</tt>.
      </p>

      <p>
        Debreate requires two main sofware to launch successfully. It needs
        <a href="https://python.org/">Python</a> (>=3.10) &amp;
        <a href="https://wxpython.org/">wxPython</a> (>=4.0.7, recommended at least 4.2.0). Most
        major Linux distributions will have Python pre-installed. But you may need to install
        wxPython manually if you are running Debreate portably. If wxPython is not found on the
        system when launching it will prompt to install using <a href="https://pypi.org">pip</a>.
        If <tt>init.py</tt> was not launched from a terminal command line, it will attempt to find
        &amp; open an appropriate terminal application for prompt input. If approved, it will
        execute <tt>python3 -m pip install wheel attrdict3 wxPython</tt>. Once installed, the user
        interface should open. Some terminals (gnome-terminal &amp; mate-terminal) seem to drop the
        process afterwards, so the GUI won't display until it is run again.
      </p>

      <p>
        For other sofware that is required for full function, see the
        <a href="https://github.com/debreate/debreate#requirements">README</a>.
      </p>
    </div>

    <div class="box flex-col" id="notes">
      <h1 class="header"><a href="#toc">Notes</a></h1>

      <h2 class="header" id="wxpython-compat"><a href="#toc">wxPython Compatibility</a></h2>
      <p>
        Debreate relies heavily on wxPython for its user interface. Most linux distributions provide
        versions from their package managers. As of writing this, Ubuntu supplies
        <a href="https://packages.ubuntu.com/python3-wxgtk4.0">version 4.0</a>. However, there are
        some things broken in 4.0 &amp; 4.1 that have been fixed in version 4.2. Namely, the
        directory tree control. If your wxPython version is less than 4.2.0, you will not be able
        to use the built-in directory tree to add files to your project. Drag-and-drop from the
        system filemanager still does work. The minimum required version to launch the application
        is 4.0.7. Anything older, &amp; the application will attempt to launch an error dialog with
        a notification that the installed version is unsupported.
      </p>

      <p>
        If your system's package manager does not supply version 4.2, it is recommended to install
        the latest version via the <a href="https://pypi.org/project/wxPython/">Python Package
        Index</a>. That can be done with the command <tt>python3 -m pip install wxPython</tt> or
        <tt>pip3 install wxPython</tt>.
      </p>

      <p>
        Unless fixes are backported to older versions, it is likely support for anything older than
        4.2 will be dropped very soon. Because systems such as Ubuntu are not yet distributing the
        latest release, it complicates things when installing Debreate from it's .deb package.
        Previously wxPython was made to be a hard dependency. But as a workaround, since the
        recommended version is not yet available, it is made as an alternative dependency to the
        <a href="https://packages.ubuntu.com/python3-pip">python3-pip package</a>. This allows it
        to be installed despite wxPython not being on the system. When launched without wxPython, it
        attempts to prompt the user to install via pip.
      </p>

      <h2 class="header" id="non-debian"><a href="#toc">Using on Non-Debian Systems</a></h2>
      <p>
        The software is tested on Debian based systems. It is unknown how it will function on other
        operating systems. It is likely the application will start, but package building will fail
        unless the Debian packaging backend tools are installed.
      </p>

      <p>
        Some testing has been done on Windows just to get the application running. As of yet, it
        will not fully function.
      </p>

      <p>
        Support for wxPython on Windows under the native Python installers seems to be lacking.
        Attempts to install via pip have failed or ended up in corrupt packages. Fortunately, the
        <a href="https://www.msys2.org/">MSYS2/MinGW-w64 project</a> provides a working package. It
        can be installed via pacman (<tt>pacman -S &lt;repo&gt;-wxPython</tt>).
      </p>
    </div>

    <div class="box l-col" id="links">
      <h1 class="header">Navigation</h1>
      <ul>
        <li><a href="/help/usage.html">Using Debreate</a></li>
        <li><a href="/help/translating.html">Translating Debreate</a></li>
        <li><a href="/libdbr/">libdbr</a></li>
      </ul>

      <h1 class="header">Links</h1>
      <ul>
        <li><a href="https://github.com/debreate/debreate">GitHub Project</a></li>
        <li><a href="https://gitlab.com/debreate/debreate">GitLab Project</a></li>
        <li><a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/debreate">SourceForge Project</a></li>
        <li><a href="https://debreate.wordpress.com/">WordPress Page</a></li>
        <li><a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/">Debian Policy Manual</a></li>
        <li><a href="https://lintian.debian.org/tags">Lintian Tags</a></li>
        <li><a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/">freedesktop.org Specifications</a></li>
      </ul>
    </div>

    <div class="box r-col">
      <h1 class="header">Downloads</h1>
      <h2 id="title-stable"></h2>
      <ul id="assets-stable"></ul>
      <h2 id="title-dev"></h2>
      <ul id="assets-dev"></ul>
      <h2>PPAs:</h2>
      <ul>
        <li><a href="https://launchpad.net/~antumdeluge/+archive/ubuntu/debreate">stable</a>
        (currently outdated)</li>
        <li><a href="https://launchpad.net/~antumdeluge/+archive/ubuntu/debreate-dev">
          development</a></li>
      </ul>
    </div>

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