Portable Software Center (PSC) is an application that lets you create a "portable" local repository (works with Debian-based systems, tested on Ubuntu) to which you can add any packages you want, with the purpose of installing them later on a computer that's not connected to the Internet.
With PSC you can add packages to your custom local repo from any repository enabled on your computer and it automatically downloads the dependencies for each selected package. You can even add .deb packages which you've manually downloaded. Then, you can copy the Portable Software Center folder to other computers that aren't connected to the Internet and install the packages you've added to your repository.
Running Portable Software Center
Unfortunately PSC is not 100% portable because it requires python-glade2, which at least in Ubuntu 11.10 (I'm not sure about other Ubuntu versions), is not installed by default. To install it on the computer that's connected to the Internet, run:
sudo apt-get install python-glade2For computers not connected to the Internet, you'll need to manually download the python-glad2 package (as well as libglade2-0) from some other computer that has an Internet connection - for Oneiric, get python-glade2 and libglade2-0.
Then, to run PSC, extract the downloaded archive (see the bottom of the post for download links), double click the "psc.py" file and select "Run".
You can also run the command line interface (which doesn't need any extra dependencies). TGo do this, run the following command inside the extracted repoman-cli_1.2-psc_0.2 folder:
./repoman_cli.py --helpHow to use Portable Software Center (PSC)
PSC comes with a manual but it's in Spanish (see the PDF available in the downloaded archive), so I'll try to tell you the basics in this post.
On the computer that's connected to the Internet:
- To add some applications/packages to your local repository, click on the "Portable Repository Administration" tab. Here, you can select a category or "All", then search for the package(s) you want to add. To add a package to your local repository, double click it.
- On the "Add local" tab (under "Portable Repository Administration"), you can add .deb files.
- Once you're done adding all the packages you want, click the "Create" button. Then you'll have to wait for all the packages you've selected (and their dependencies) to be downloaded and added your your custom repository.
- Now copy the Portable Software Center folder - repoman-cli_1.2-psc_0.2 - to an USB stick or CD.
On the computer that's not connected to the Internet:
- Copy Portable Software Center from the USB stick / CD to this computer.
- On the "Software Center" tab, click the unlock button (it's on the right), enter your password, then click the refresh button (also on the right). At this point, all the packages you've added to the custom repository should show up here.
- Select the packages you want to install, then click the "+" button - the installation should now start. Close the popup window once it says "Completed" or else the main interface will look frozen, and you're done.
Download Portable Software Center: mirror 1 | mirror 2
The PSC official website is http://comunidades.uci.cu/projects/konoha but it's not working at the time I'm writing this.
For a similar application, see Keyrix (thouh I don't think it's maintained anymore).
Many thanks to DesdeLinux for the info!
