install-cgoban3

install-cgoban3 is a small script I put together for installing cgoban3 ¹ on computers running Linux. This allows a Linux user to log onto KGS, play games there, and edit games locally or remotely.

IOW, cgoban 3 is a KGS client, and this program downloads it and installs it for you. Do not mistake it for cgoban 1, which was an IGS/NNGS client.

What it does

It first checks your system out to see if there are any missing prerequisites:
- It checks if you are running the script as root
- It checks if you're on a Linux
- It checks if the following are on the $PATH
  - wget
  - base64
  - java
  - desktop-file-install
- It checks that /usr/share/applications exists
...and if there are any unsatisfied prerequisites, it advises you how to satisfy them especially, but not solely, on:
- Debian-based
- Redhat-based
- and Arch-based Linuxes
Then it downloads the cgoban3 "jar", sets up a "cgoban3" script that calls the jar, and adds cgoban3 to your desktop's Games menu with a icon (the icon will likely be smaller than that in practice).

So far, it has been tested on the following Linuxes+Desktop Environments, but I've made an effort to use tools I believe should be relatively portable:

OS+Desktop environment	How it went	Where it appeared
Debian+Cinnamon	Smoothly	Games menu
Fedora+Gnome	Needed a different JRE, but otherwise went fine	In the menu, not a Games menu
OpenSUSE+KDEPlasma	Smoothly	Games menu
Arch+Gnome	Needed some porting, but works well now	"The" menu
PopOS+Cosmic	Smoothly	The application list

BTW, if there's a Linux not listed there, and you'd like me to try it out before you dive in, feel free to let me know by e-mail.

An example install follows. We attempt the install twice; the first time there is an unsatisfied prerequisite, so we address that and run it again. Things I typed are highlighted in lightgreen.

$ cd /tmp
$ wget -q https://stromberg.dnsalias.org/svn/install-cgoban3/trunk/install-cgoban3
$ chmod +x install-cgoban3
$ ./install-cgoban3
./install-cgoban3: preflight check: you are not root.  Please sudo or su to root and re-run this script
./install-cgoban3: preflight check failed, please install dependencies and/or sudo/su to root as directed above
$ sudo ./install-cgoban3
It looks like the install was successful.  Check your desktop environment's menus to see if cgoban3 is now under Games.
Alternatively, you can start cgoban3 with the "kgs" or "cgoban3" commands at a shell prompt.
$

Please note that there's really no good reason to just tell Linux users to use a raw jar file.

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Timestamp: 2024-10-05 17:39:00 PDT

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