Installing Bazaar (CVS) Explorer in Ubuntu

Posted under » Ubuntu » Linux on 1 November 2009

Before I begin, Bazaar is the new CVS or SVN and Bazaar Explorer is the client like Tortoise SVN. etc.

Installing Bazaar Explorer on windows is not that difficult and it took me about 10 mins. You just have to install python and then qbzr first. QBzr is a cross platform, Qt-based front-end for Bazaar, providing GUI applications for many core bzr commands. Installing QBzr will also install PyQt and Qt. Of course you need Python for all these to run.

Now, I tried installing Bazaar Explorer on Ubuntu desktop version expecting it to be a breeze but alas, I was wrong.

According to the instructions, you have to install QBzr, PyQt, Qt and bzr and it must be the latest version especially QBzr. This is where the main installation headache lies all thanks to launchpad, the creator of this tool.

Fire up synaptic > System/Administration/Synaptic. The current version is the old version. Read the instructions here The steps are to get the new version are.

Update the Settings/Repositories. Go to "Third-party Repositories tab", then on the Add button, and in the APT line field enter (from the QBzr page): "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bzr/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main".

Get the key. This is some security shit but without it, you cannot update your qbzr. eg.

$sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 12345

12345 is a sample number. Get the real number from the site. You will see something like

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 click 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 0.2, enough for Bazaar Explorer). You can also use... aptitude install qbzr

Then, in a terminal (x-term only because this is gnome), follow what remained of the instructions on the Bazaar Explorer Linux Installation page: normally @ ~/.bazaar/plugins

$ cd .bazaar 
$ mkdir plugins
$ cd plugins
$ bzr branch lp:bzr-explorer explorer
$ bzr explorer

The last command may not work.