klik://xara-latest

Hi,

you may already know about klik [http://klik.atekon.de/]. If not, read on...

Because the klik website is now providing a recipe for "xara" and "xara-latest".

klik was originally designed to make adding of more software to Linux live CDs (such as Knoppix and Kanotix) extremely easy. In recent months, klik has moved to broaden its scope. klik now works for many more distributions (not just .deb based ones, but also .rpm and .tgz-using ones).

1000s of different klik recipes allow a klik client to download 1000s of applications in one of the mentioned package formats and convert it into a new file type with the extension .cmg. The .cmg is a "compressed image", representing a complete file system (similar to an ISO image) inside a single file, including all direct dependencies and data files.

The .cmg gets loopmounted (with *user*, not root privileges!) by an external helper script (part of the klik client), and then started via an embedded wrapper (that knows and tweaks all the important environment variables, like PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH for the purpose of the .cmg)

klik://xara and klik://xara-latest represents the 2 different Xara LX builds offered by Xara. Of course, these "fake" links will only work for real if you have installed the 20 kBytes klik client utility.

Once it is set up and works, it can give you a risk-less test driving option for many thousand of GUI software packages. Risk-less, because it will not mess with system libraries, and it will not touch the realm of the native package management system. klik remains firmly in user space, and will not add more than 1 .cmg file to the user's home directory (which also can again be easily deleted).

In the case of xara or xara-latest, klik will fetch the respective "recipe" from the klik server. The klik client utility will then run that recipe, which basically makes it download the official *.bz2" builds from the Xara website, extract the package, and re-pack it into a single .cmg file that can be run directly, without ever messing with the system's native package manager....

To install the klik client, run this command (as user, *not* as root!):

wget klik.atekon.de/client/install -O -|sh

To test and verify that your klik client works, try with the small reference recipe of klik://xvier first.

If you are curious now, please read the klik FAQ [http://klik.atekon.de/wiki/index.php/User%27s_FAQ] before you ask the obvious questions :-)

Happy klik-king on xara and xara-latest now!

Cheers,
Kurt