Search for packages with whisker menu

[spidermouse]

Interesting trick with the Whisker Menu:
If the search is set as the second option in this post:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1035247 ... 76#1035276
The searching can be done with "!s pkgname".
Open Whisker and type "!s synaptic" (without the quotes) then press Return and zenity dialog pops up displaying a list.

[Richard]

Umm. I get an Error: Failed to execute child. on MX-17.1_x64

[Stevo]

Umm. I get an Error: Failed to execute child. on MX-17.1_x64

Is zenity installed?

[Richard]

Ahh, no. Only yad.
I'll get it.

[Richard]

with zenity-3.22.0-1+b1, I get the same error.

Error-!s synaptic.png

Must be something else that the stock MX-17.1 is missing?

[rich]

Interesting trick with the Whisker Menu...

Nice! Wonder what's the way to link it up to MXPI or synaptic or something to get an option to install from there... similar to newer gnome shell features... cool trick!

Must be something else that the stock MX-17.1 is missing?

I was able to get it going on stock mx 17.1 with just installing zenity and dctrl-tools per the Ask Ubuntu post... maybe double check the entry in whisker menu settings? That error comes up if the script path is incorrect or possibly if the script is not executable. I know it took me like three tries to get it in right

[spidermouse]

Richard maybe it will work with yad

Don't forget to install dctrl-tools

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

PKG="$@"

PKGNAME="$(grep-available -sPackage -sVersion -sDescription . /var/lib/apt/lists/*_Packages |
           grep -A 2 -E "^Package\: .*${PKG}" |
           awk '{$1="";print $0}' |
           yad --list --width=900 --height=700 --column="Package" --column="Version avail" --print-column=1 \
                  --column="Description" --column="" --hide-column=4 --title="package info" --text="pkg info" --center)"

PKGNAME="${PKGNAME//|/''}"

[[ ! -z ${PKGNAME} ]] && apt-cache show ${PKGNAME} | yad --text-info --title="apt-cache show $PKGNAME" --width=900 --height=700 --center

Or with a different pattern:

Name: Enter package name(s) to searh for
Pattern: +s
Command: /bin/bash -c "/home/richard/Desktop/pkginfo %s"

[spidermouse]

Interesting trick with the Whisker Menu...

Nice! Wonder what's the way to link it up to MXPI or synaptic or something to get an option to install from there... similar to newer gnome shell features... cool trick!

No idea how to link it to synaptic or MXPI. I've tried to to use the xdotool to type the package name and enter into the synaptic's search bar but that didn't work.

[Richard]

I checked, and I already had dctrl-tools-2.24-2+b1 and yad-0.38.2-1 installed.
Then installed zenity-3.22.0-1+b1,
but when I try "!s" in whisker menu,
I get the same error as in the image above?
I'm running xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin-2.1.5-0mx17, just in case there's a newer one.

[rich]

The error message means whisker menu doesn't know your command. What that probably means is the Search Actions command for !s is not pointing to the script, or something like that. I would just double check your name, pattern, and command entries.