Zero Install

a decentralised cross-distribution software installation system

Install from Source

Installing from source. Zero Install is written entirely in Python, so installing from source is quite simple.

To use Zero Install, you will need:

  • Python (version 2.5 or later, including any -dev package).
  • GnuPG (to check the digital signatures).
  • xdg-utils (optional; GNOME and KDE desktop integration).
  • PyGTK 2.12 or later (only needed for the GUI). If you have an older version of GTK, use Zero Install version 0.41 instead. Note: even if you don't use the GUI, you still need python-gobject. This is a dependency of PyGTK, but is also available separately.
Name Zero Install Injector
Maintainer Thomas Leonard
License GNU Lesser General Public License
SCM GIT repository

If you are looking for a package, try the main downloads page.

Instructions

Download the latest .tar.bz2 archive from the download page (and the corresponding .sig file if you want to verify it), or using wget:

$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/zero-install/injector/0.50/zeroinstall-injector-0.50.tar.bz2
$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/zero-install/injector/0.50/zeroinstall-injector-0.50.tar.bz2.sig

Check that the signature is correct using GPG (this also ensures that GPG is installed correctly). You'll need my GPG key, which you can download and import using --recv-key (or manually):

$ gpg --recv-key --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net 59A53CC1
$ gpg zeroinstall-injector-0.50.tar.bz2.sig
gpg: Signature made Sat Aug 21 11:37:34 2010 BST using DSA key ID 59A53CC1
gpg: Good signature from "Thomas Leonard <XXXXX@gmail.com>"
gpg: Good signature from "Thomas Leonard <XXXXX@users.sourceforge.net>"
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: 9242 9807 C985 3C07 44A6  8B9A AE07 8280 59A5 3CC1

The warning is just to tell you that you haven't yet established that the key really belongs to me (ultra-paranoid users will now cross-check the finger-print using some other source of information).

You should now extract the archive, and change directory inside it:

$ tar xjf zeroinstall-injector-0.50.tar.bz2
$ cd zeroinstall-injector-0.50
Installing normally Installing without root access

For a normal install, either su to root, install, and exit from root, or use sudo:

$ sudo python setup.py install

If you don't have the root password, use this command. You'll need to make sure that ~/bin is in $PATH in this case.

$ python setup.py install --home ~ --install-data ~/.local
$ export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

Logging out and back in again will ensure $PATH and the Applications menu get updated correctly, on Ubuntu at least.

error: invalid Python installation: unable to open /usr/lib/python2.5/config/Makefile
You need to install the python-dev package, not just python.
package init file 'zeroinstall/0launch-gui/__init__.py' not found (or not a regular file)
This is just a warning and is harmless.

You now have two new commands: 0launch, which takes the URL of a program and runs it, and 0alias, which lets you use short names instead of URLs.