HaikuDépôt

HaikuDepot is the central application when it comes to managing your software packages. With it you can browse and search through package repositories (also called "depots") and install, update and uninstall packages. HaikuDepot starts up with a list of "Featured packages", software that's deemed interesting to many users. As soon as you enter a term in the search box or choose a category, the display changes to smaller icons and more information arranged in columns.

Le filtre

Au dessus de la liste des paquets, on trouve des critères pour filtrer ceux visibles :

• The Category pop-up menu lets you limit the list to individual categories like "Audio" or "Games".

• The Depot pop-up menu determines which online depots are queried or if only those packages shown, that were installed from somewhere other than an online depot ("Local"). Maybe from an USB thumb drive or downloaded from some website or a package that you've built yourself.

• The Search terms text field filters the list to those packages that have all the entered (space-delimited) strings in their name or description.

La liste

Comme dans une fenêtre du Tracker, il est possible de choisir quels colonnes afficher avec un clic droit sur l’entête de la colonne. Un clic gauche trie la liste en fonction de la colonne. Bien sûr, il est possible de réorganiser les colonnes en les glissant vers une nouvelle position.

La colonne de statut d’un paquet peut avoir pour valeur :

• Active: le paquet est déjà installé et prêt à être utilisé.

• Available : le paquet existe dans le dépôt et il peut être téléchargé et installé. Si le paquet a des dépendances, vous en serez informé à l’installation et vous aurez la possibilité de télécharger et installer tout ce qui est nécessaire.

• Pending / %: Pending is shown for a package that is queued for download/installation. While a package is downloaded, the progress is shown as percentage.

• Update available: une version plus récente que celle déjà installée est disponible.

Vous pouvez attraper la ligne en pointillé entre la liste des paquets et la zone d’information pour redimensionner verticalement la liste des paquets.

La zone d'information

At the bottom is an area that displays information on the package that is currently selected in the list above it.
To the right of package name, author, rating and version is a button, that – depending on the current state of the package – lets you Install, Uninstall or Update it. If a package is already installed, you'll find an additional button there to Open the application.

Below are three tabs: About, Ratings, and Changelog.

• About

  The first tab has a detailed description of the package, as well as screenshots and a contact address and URL of the team that maintains the packaged software, if available. Clicking the screenshot thumbnail will open it full-size in a new window

• Ratings

  The second tab shows ratings and comments of users, if available.

  

  To the left is a statistic, showing the number of stars (1 to 5) the package got from how many users.
  In the middle are user comments with their nickname, the number of stars they gave the package and which version of the package they were rating or commenting on. You'll find more on how to rate a package yourself further down.
  With the little thumb up/down icons to the right, you can show your approval or disapproval with a certain comment.

• Changelog

  The last tab shows the detailed history of all the versions of the package that have been released so far.

Outils et Options

Dans le menu Tools en haut de la fenêtre se trouve un l’élément Refresh depots pour mettre à jour les dépôts. Le programme va alors chercher la liste à jour de tous les paquets disponibles dans le dépôt.

Dans le menu Options, vous pourrez choisir de montrer les paquets de développement (Show develop packages) ou de code source (Show source packages) dans la liste. Pour l’utilisateur moyen, ces paquets sont sans intérêt et ne feront que rallonger la liste. Ils sont par contre importants pour les personnes qui ont besoin des bibliothèques, des en-têtes, etc… d’un paquet pour développer et compiler des programmes qui en dépendent.

Of more interest are the other two items, Show available packages and Show installed packages, which are pretty self-explanatory.

Créer un compte utilisateur

To be able to rate a package, you need a user account at the Haiku Depot Server that serves all the packages and keeps track of ratings and user comments. You can create an account within the HaikuDepot application by clicking on the menu in the far right of the menu bar that shows your current status: Not logged in. Choosing Log in... opens a window with two tabs; one to enter your user name and password (once you have those) to log in, and the other to create a new account:

To create an account you need to:

• use an all lower-case user name without special characters
• use a password that's at least 8 characters long with at least 2 capitals and 2 numbers
• provide a valid email address (if you want a new password sent to you in case you forgot it)
• solve the captcha

After logging in, the top-right menu of the HaikuDepot window will now say Logged in as (...), showing your user name. The menu now offers you to Switch account... or Log out.

Noter et Commenter

After you've created a user account and are logged in, you can rate a package and leave a comment, if you want. Just hover the mouse over the rating stars in the info area of a package and they turn into a Rating... button. Click it to open the rating window:

Here you move the mouse over the stars to light them up and choose your rating, you can also choose from a number of levels to judge the stability of the application and pick the language of your optional comment. To make a comment meaningful, you should have worked with the application you're about to rate for a while to become familiar with its features, bugs and quirks. And don't write the next great American novel... keep it short, sweet and polite. :)
After you click Send the data is transmitted to the server. You may have to go to the Tools menu to Refresh depots before you can see your changes.

At any time, you can come back and edit your comment and re-rate it. You can also hide your rating from other users by deactivating the checkbox Other users can see this rating.