Bazaar: new website launch – great usability & stick Bazaar Explorer on Jaunty

Very cool, Emma proudly tweeted (and justifiably so):

The new Bazaar home page has launched! Check it out at http://is.gd/3YAS6 #bzr #redesign

OK. Headed right over to http://bazaar-vcs.org. Very cool. I've been using Bazaar for most of my development over the past few months, and have had quite a few tugs with their old website. One of the hardest things was to know what was current, what was old, what was easy, even though the quantity of good docs has never been a problem.

Now I discover this cross-platform Bazaar Explorer desktop app I didn't even know existed! Check out the demo right from the home page!

So even though I'm basically a command line worker, I immediately stuck this on my jaunty laptop, because on one of those bleary "who am I and what's my name?" mornings, it's going to give me a nice bookmarked overworld of what I'm up to and what I should be doing of a morning.

Very cool, Emma proudly tweeted (and justifiably so):

The new Bazaar home page has launched! Check it out at http://is.gd/3YAS6 #bzr #redesign

OK. Headed right over to http://bazaar-vcs.org. Very cool. I’ve been using Bazaar for most of my development over the past few months, and have had quite a few tugs with their old website. One of the hardest things was to know what was current, what was old, what was easy, even though the quantity of good docs has never been a problem.

Now I discover this cross-platform Bazaar Explorer desktop app I didn’t even know existed! Check out the demo right from the home page!

So even though I’m basically a command line worker, I immediately stuck this on my jaunty laptop, because on one of those bleary “who am I and what’s my name?” mornings, it’s going to give me a nice bookmarked overworld of what I’m up to and what I should be doing of a morning.

So as I was going through the steps I though I would just lay them out here so no-one is daunted on Ubuntu Jaunty (Karmic is going to make that PPA stuff easier it seems) with the few tasks you need to step through  to  get Bazaar Explorer part of your daily experience.

  • On the new Bazaar website go to http://doc.bazaar-vcs.org/explorer/en/ (just 2 clicks from the home page, cool).
  • I’m already excited, so I click on the appropriate Get Started link: http://doc.bazaar-vcs.org/explorer/en/install-linux.html
  • I dutifully installed QBzr following these instructions: http://bazaar-vcs.org/QBzr
    • I fired up Synaptic (System/Administration/Synaptic
    • I saw that qbzr was on there, but at a version too early (0.9.something) to run Bazaar Explorer
    • I clicked on Settings/Repositories, then on the Third-party Repositories tab, then on the Add button, and in the APT line field entered (from the QBzr page): deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/qbzr-dev/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
    • I clicked close, but BEFORE clicking the Reload icon on the main menu, I fired up a terminal and entered the following (based on the info on the PPA page: https://launchpad.net/~qbzr-dev/+archive/ppa):
      $ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 364F5AF5
      Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 364F5AF5
      gpg: requesting key 364F5AF5 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
      gpg: key 364F5AF5: public key "Launchpad PPA for QBzr Developers" imported
      gpg: Total number processed: 1
      gpg:               imported: 1  (RSA: 1)
      $ 
    • NOW I clicked on the Reload Icon (like doing $sudo apt-get update)
    • Then I went ahead and installed QBzr right from Synaptic (now magically bumped up to 0.14.2.1, enough for Bazaar Explorer).
  • Then, also in a terminal, I followed what remained of the instructions on the Bazaar Explorer Linux Installation page:
    $ cd .bazaar
    $ mkdir plugins
    $ cd plugins
    $ bzr branch lp:bzr-explorer explorer
  • Then I executed from the same terminal (and followed along with the GNOME demo):
    $ bzr explorer
  • In order to make a permanent setup in the Applications menu, I first downloaded the icon from the Logo Options page, then on my system menu hit System/Preferences/Main Menu, clicked on Programming on the left, then clicked on the New Item button.
  • I entered the following info:
    Name: Bazaar Explorer
    Command: /usr/bin/bzr explorer
  • Then I clicked on the Icon button and selected the Bazaar icon (I happened to have one at /usr/share/pixmaps/bzr-icon-64.png), then clicked OK, and then Close
  • Going to Applications/Programming and clicking on Bazaar Explorer now executes that app and brings up the Welcome screen!