Arch Linux User Repository

Anyone interested in giving some love and adopting this orphaned PKGBUILD ? And its companion fbpad-mkfn-git ?

Together with other framebuffer video/image/pdf/multimedia tools (fbpdf, fbvis, fbff, etc) a underated must for command line lovers. Pitty it isnt more well known among Arch users. Just like fbterm. It even has a wiki page, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fbpad

A very nice tool, that continues in 2022, to be updated and maintained by its developer.

Example, just now in August 2022,

Aug 2022: Fbpad has a new command m-;.
It executes a shell for the current terminal, but unlike m-c, sends SIGUSR1
when switching to another terminal and sends SIGUSR2 when switching back.
These signals are used in Fbvnc and Fbff to disable drawing when their
terminal is not visible.  For these to work, the shell must ignore these
signals.

The correct URL of the new repo:

https://github.com/aligrudi/fbpad.git

(The old location still works, but the developer now prefers GitHub and tracks issues and pull requests there.)

Some news about the author of this project.

He seems to be completely moving all his stuff to github.

Recently created repo, https://github.com/aligrudi/fbpad_mkfn

This PKGBUILD, fbpad-git, has still not updated the sources.

source=("$pkgname::git+git://repo.or.cz/fbpad.git")

In the last change, LICENSE file was removed from source files. Now when installing the license file, it can't be found in the desired position. That is because only source files are copied into $scrdir. Maybe LICENSE need to be added back to source.

This PKGBUILD is outdated with unnecessary mandatory dependencies and urls.

And it fails to build with:

term.c:335:25: error: expected ‘;’ before ‘TERM’
  335 |         d[j++] = "TERM=" TERM;
      |                         ^~~~~
      |                         ;
make: *** [Makefile:7: term.o] Error 1
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
    Aborting...
checking dependencies...

I tested building this program without this PKGBUILD. And without any pathches or customization whatsover.

I just followed what the developer has to say in his homepage:

http://litcave.rudi.ir/

He links to github.com, not repo.cz has in the PKGBUILD. So I:

git clone https://github.com/aligrudi/fbpad

As stated in the README, you need a "tf type font":

....you should edit conf.h.  To get fbpad running
you need to make sure FR points to a valid fbpad font (for testing
you can try http://litcave.rudi.ir/courr.tf)... 

That's all you need. No need for nothing more just to get this running. So:

wget http://litcave.rudi.ir/courr.tf

Edit "conf.h" to point to the "courr.tf" file and:

make

It built almost instantly. And the program works like a charm. All the framebuffer video players, pdf and image viewers work on it. (mpv, fbi, fbida, etc)

Really, really, underrated nice little tool.

Not sure if this PKGBUILD is up to date. Is ft2tf really needed as a dependency ? Or just fbpad-mkfn-git ? Could the current PKGBUILD maintainer please comment ?

Background:

In 2016 the upstream developer made this change, https://repo.or.cz/fbpad.git/commit/d11a8ba4de5fd577f8802830ae7831d8b93f1418

README: replace ft2tf with fbpad_mkfn

I also checked that apparently, https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/fbpad-mkfn-git/

Valryne: BTW, the old `ft2tf' executable still works.

But as the developer explicitly states in his home page, http://litcave.rudi.ir/

Jan 2016: I have uploaded fbpad_mkfn, *a replacement* for ft2tf, for generating fbpad font files. It can use either stb truetype header or freetype library.

and

fbpad_mkfn program (or its predecessor ft2tf)

He doesnt even has a git repo for ft2tf, https://repo.or.cz/projlist.cgi?name=e4985eabe11cacf799a880921d7ab569, unlike all his other projects.

Nowhere can I see any need for ft2tf anymore.

In 2017, this PKGBUILD maintainer made this change, https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/commit/?h=fbpad-git&id=691f22f35aefb94ab43fbfa91dd626cf77c09c95

Use fbpad-mkfn if it's available...

So that, as of today, we have

makedepends=('git' 'ft2tf' 'ttf-dejavu')

and then a line

if [ -x /usr/bin/fbpad-mkfn ]; then FT2TF="fbpad-mkfn -h20 -w10"; SZ="17h120v100b0a1"; else FT2TF=ft2tf; SZ=6; fi

Is this really needed ? Shouldnt ft2tf be completely removed from the PKGBUILD dependencies ? And only use fbpad-mkfn-git ?

@m040601 When launching programs in fbpad, the framebuffer does not update, not unless I swtich to another tty.

E.g. if I run fbpad, Alt+c to open a terminal, and run ls, I will still have a black screen. If I switch to another tty and then back again, the fbpad display is updated (e.g. with the ls output).

Is there something I am doing wrong here? Do I need some sort of multiplexer or other program?

@StackException

Any idea why all I see is a blackscreen when I run fbpad ?

Try first ALT-c to open a shell, and then less /usr/share/doc/fbpad/README.

Yeah, this program is very cool but doesnt include any man page. You have to read the installed /usr/share/doc/fbpad/README.

Everything is basicly controlled by the ALT key. When you start you have an empty workspace. It works a bit like dwm. What he calls "TAGS" are workspaces.

see this line in conf.h

#define TAGS        "xnlhtr01uiva-"

So ALT-x or ALT-n etc. ... switches to workspace x,n etc...

I recommend to change to

#define TAGS        "123"

otherwise this program "eats" a lot of your ALT binding.

ALT-TAB, ALT-o switches back or to the last workspace CONTROL-ALT-q quits fbpad

I can't build on, Linux 5.7.10-arch1-1

==> Starting build()...
cc -c -Wall -O2 fbpad.c
fbpad.c: In function ‘directkey’:
fbpad.c:160:9: warning: null argument where non-null required (argument 1) [-Wnonnull]
  160 |    if (!strcmp(PASS, pass))
      |         ^~~~~~
cc -c -Wall -O2 term.c
term.c: In function ‘term_exec’:
term.c:344:33: error: expected ‘}’ before ‘TERM’
  344 |   char *envp[MAXENV] = {"TERM=" TERM};
      |                        ~        ^~~~
make: *** [Makefile:7: term.o] Error 1
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
    Aborting...
error making: %!s(func() string=0x55c22040f410)

I then did what @StackException said and add this to conf.h

define TERM "xterm-kitty"

Pay attention, it's conf.h, not config.h. If you put it in config.h it won't compile

The config.h seems to be put there by this AUR package. There is no config.h in the original source. I find the name confusing. Should be named conf.example.h or conf.default.h

Anyway after this it compiles and seems to be working fine. Not sure if this is an Arch problem or an upstream one.

A small reminder to the maintainers of this package. Keep an eye on, for possible or future canonical git repo changes.

This developer, who makes all these very interesting packages, is called Ali Gholami Rudi and his home page is http://litcave.rudi.ir/

He publishes his work in 2 different git repos, which until now seem to be in sync:

• https://repo.or.cz/projlist.cgi?name=e4985eabe11cacf799a880921d7ab569
• https://github.com/aligrudi?tab=repositories

This AUR package is pulling from repo.or.cz. But on his homepage he points the links to github