Program builder

[XavSPM]

Hello everyone,

I'm sharing a Python tool designed to simplify the creation and deployment of custom client applications based on Phoebus.
It facilitates the distribution of standalone, pre-packaged bundles as native installers:

• Linux: .deb (Debian/Ubuntu) and .rpm (Fedora/RHEL/Rocky) packages.
• Windows: .msi and .exe installers.

Internally, the tool relies on Apache Maven for source compilation and on the jpackage utility (OpenJDK) to generate standalone executables.

This project is currently a Proof of Concept (PoC) and not a finalized program. Adjustments are still possible, and your feedback, testing, or suggestions for improvement are welcome!

Builder Phoebus.zip

[shroffk]

This looks rather interesting.
Could you demo this at the next monthly meeting? or the codeathon?

[shroffk]

I would like to understand if this can be used to build the site specific product (the pom.xml)

[XavSPM]

Hi @shroffk,

Thank you very much for your positive feedback and the invitation!

Although I can read and write English without much difficulty, I do not speak it, which makes a live oral presentation or demonstration impossible for me. However, if helpful, I would be more than happy to write a comprehensive technical document detailing the tool’s architecture, its internal workings, and how the compilation and packaging pipelines are handled.

If members of the community want to contribute, adopt, or take over the project, they are more than welcome. I am not a software developer by trade, and my time to work on this is limited (mostly working on it during night shifts while monitoring the cyclotron). I originally created this because I was already using jpackage with Bash scripts to generate standalone, preconfigured Phoebus bundles for our operators and researchers. This made it much easier for non-developers to monitor cyclotron data, and I created this GUI/CLI tool to make that entire process user-friendly and reproducible.

Regarding your question about site-specific products:

Currently, the tool downloads the official Phoebus sources and dynamically modifies phoebus-product/pom.xml based on the modules selected by the user (adding or removing <dependency> tags while resolving transitive dependencies). It also customizes Launcher.java (to assign each application a unique WM_CLASS on Linux for proper taskbar grouping and window identification), injects site-specific settings.ini, embedded UI files (.bob), logos, and splash screens, and then runs Maven followed by jpackage to produce standalone installers (.deb, .rpm, .msi, and .exe).

For now, the tool only fetches sources from the official Phoebus GitHub repository. However, it can easily be adapted to build external site-specific products. We can add an option allowing users to point the builder to a local directory or a Git repository containing a site-specific product with its own custom pom.xml.

The tool already has the logic to automatically inspect the POM, discover all declared modules, and display them under "4. Phoebus Modules". Any site-specific modules differing from the official Phoebus release will automatically appear at the bottom under the "Discovered New Modules" section. The builder would then compile this target and pass its generated distribution archives (target/product-*.zip) directly into the jpackage pipeline.

Would you like me to implement this option?

[shroffk]

Currently, the tool downloads the official Phoebus sources and dynamically modifies phoebus-product/pom.xml based on the modules selected

perfect

I don't think we need to support the site specific products specifically...So what you have is good.