Equipping GNU/Linux Trisquel Aramo with Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)

This is a post about equipping Aramo with IDEs.
-I included: Those that can be installed in Aramo AND get updates AND are general-purpose so they allow to use more than one language.
-I excluded: Those that provide no means to update OR are specific, be it for a single language, microcontrollers, Arduino or whatever.

Contributions are, of course, welcome.

IDEs provided by Trisquel

These are the ones found in the Trisquel menu, Add/Remove Applications window, Development section, in alphabetic order: Anjuta, Bluefish, Code::Blocks, CodeLite, Geany, jEdit. There is something surprising in many of their licenses: License GPL 'X or later'. What is that, the license of Schrödinger? Anyway, here they are:

Anjuta 3.34.0

License GPL 2.0 or later. Self-defined just as 'Integrated Development Environment'. Allows to create projects using languages C, C++, Java, JS, Python and Vala. Discontinued. Its website, http://www.anjuta.org/ , is no longer functional and now redirects to, uh, https://www.firstdoormarketing.com/

Bluefish 2.2.12

License GPL 3.0 or later. Self-defined as 'software developers editor'. Allows to create projects using languages C, Apache, DHTML, DocBook, HTML, PHP+HTML, PHP, Replace, SQL and python 2 to 3. Website: https://bluefish.openoffice.nl/

Code::Blocks

Self-defined as 'cross-platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE)'. Gets installed, cannot be found in the menu. Website: https://codeblocks.org

CodeLite 14.0.0

License is said to be GPL 2.0 or later. Self-defined as 'Free, open source, C/C++/PHP and JavaScript IDE'. Allows to create projects with, well, C, C++, JS and PHP. Website: https://codelite.org

Geany 1.38

License GPL 2. Self-defined as an 'quick and light IDE', it is said to allow to create projects using languages 'C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, LaTeX, CSS, Python, Perl, Ruby, Pascal, Haskell, Erlang, Vala and many others'. Website: https://www.geany.org/

As for jEdit, 'programmer's text editor', I am not sure it qualifies as an IDE.

Requirements in order to install IDEs not provided by Trisquel

Some of the IDEs not provided by Trisquel have requirements previous to the installation. Many ask for snap or flatpak. I got flatpak to work, but found no way to get snap working. Let's go through this requirements:

Requirement: Install package libfuse2

$ sudo apt install libfuse2

Recommendable? Yes. Also, to my knowledge Aramo already includes it.

Requirement: Install package flatpak

$ sudo apt install flatpak

Aramo reports installing package flatpak version 1.12.7-1ubuntu0.1.
Recommendable? Yes. It works for some installations.

Requirement: Install package snap

$ sudo apt install snap

Aramo reports installing package snap version 2013-11-29-11.
Recommendable? No. The snap command is not found afterwards.

Requirement: Install package snapd

$ sudo apt install snapd

Recommendable? No. Aramo finds no candidate for install.

Requirement: Install Java Runtime Environment (JRE)

$ sudo apt install default-jre

Aramo reports installing OpenJDK Runtime Environment build 11.0.25+9-post-Ubuntu-1ubuntu122.04.
Recommendable? Yes.

Requirement: Install Java Development Kit (JDK) (includes JRE)

$ sudo apt install default-jdk

Aramo reports installing OpenJDK "11.0.25" 2024-10-15.
Recommendable? Yes.

Requirement: Install JDK 17

$ sudo apt install openjdk-17-jdk

Aramo reports installing version 17.0.13+11-2ubuntu1~22.04 of packages openjdk-17-jdk, openjdk-17-jdk-headless, openjdk-17-jre, openjdk-17-jre-headless.
Recommendable? Yes.

Requirement: Add repository 'universe' from Ubuntu

$ sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal universe"

This commands creates the file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/archive_uri-https_archive_ubuntu_com_ubuntu-aramo.list
Edit the file:

$ sudo nano archive_uri-https_archive_ubuntu_com_ubuntu-aramo.list

Insert "[trusted=yes]" so the file contains the following:

deb [trusted=yes] https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal universe

Recommendable? No, because of three reasons:

1. Bad idea: Adding the universe repository means that non-libre software from the Ubuntu distribution will get mixed in general with Trisquel's Libre Updates.
2. It goes worse: Trusting the repository without a signature weakens the security.
3. It works the worst: After adding this repository, Aramo's Software Updates fails and becomes a zombi process every time that I launch it.

IDEs not provided by Trisquel

Eclipse 4.34.0

License Eclipse Public License. Website: https://eclipseide.org/
Requirements: JRE.
3 methods to install Eclipse: https://itsfoss.com/install-latest-eclipse-ubuntu/
Method 1: Installing Eclipse using Snap [Easy] - Requirements: snap. Discarded because of snap command being not found.
Method 2: Installing Eclipse using the official installer (for intermediates) - Not recommended because updates not running through Software Updates.
Step 1: Download installer.
Step 2: Extract eclipse-installer directory.
Step 3: Execute eclipse-inst
Installation successful but updates are not automatical through Aramo's Software Updates and have to be launched from the menu, at Help -> Check for updates..
Method 3: Install Eclipse in classic Linux style (for experts) - Not recommended because updates not running through Software Updates.
This is the old tar -xvzf method. Not verified because of already having installed Eclipse throught method 2.

Intellij IDEA 2024.1

License Apache License 2.0. Website: https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/
4 methods to install Intellij IDEA: https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2023/09/install-intellij-idea-2023-ubuntu/
Requirements: JDK.
Method 1: Install Intellij IDEA via Snap package - Requirements: snap. Discarded because of snap command being not found.
Method 2: Install Intellij IDEA via Flatpak package - Requirements: flatpak.
Step 1:

$ flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/com.jetbrains.IntelliJ-IDEA-Community.flatpakref

Step 2:Log out
Step 3:Log in
Installation successful but updates are not automatical through Aramo's Software Updates and have to be either launched from the start screen by clicking on the gear icon at the bottom left corner, then 'Check for Updates', or by entering the following command:

$ flatpak update com.jetbrains.IntelliJ-IDEA-Community

Method 3: Install IntelliJ IDEA via Official Tarball - This is the old tar -xvzf method. Not verified because of already having installed IntelliJ IDEA throught method 4.
Method 4: Install IntelliJ IDEA via Ubuntu PPA.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/apps
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install intellij-idea-community

Installation successful but many updates from ppa:xtradeb/apps are mixed with Aramo's.

NetBeans 24

License Apache 2.0. Website: https://netbeans.apache.org/
4 methods to install NetBeans: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/netbeans-install-uninstall
Requirements: JDK 17.
Method 1: Using Binary Package - Not recommended because updates not running through Software Updates.
Method 2: Using APT Repository - Discarded because of the problems caused by the 'universe' repository.
Method 3: Using Snap - Requirements: snap. Discarded because of snap command being not found.
Method 4: Using Flatpak - Requirements: flatpak. Discarded because of failing:

$ flatpak install flathub org.apache.netbeans
No remote refs found similar to ‘flathub’

With methods 2, 3 and 4 failing the only method left is method 1 - to use a binary package. Should we give up on installing NetBeans in a way that would be updated by Aramo's Software Updates, we could use this method and then update Netbeans manually.
Step 1: Add Netbeans' GPG key:

wget https://downloads.apache.org/netbeans/KEYS
gpg --import KEYS

Step 2: Find and download the deb package, the checksum file and the signature file. In this case we are using version 24-1:

wget https://dlcdn.apache.org/netbeans/netbeans-installers/24/apache-netbeans_24-1_all.deb
wget https://downloads.apache.org/netbeans/netbeans-installers/24/apache-netbeans_24-1_all.deb.sha512
wget https://downloads.apache.org/netbeans/netbeans-installers/24/apache-netbeans_24-1_all.deb.asc

Step 3: Verify cheksum - it works OK for me.

sha512sum -c apache-netbeans_24-1_all.deb.sha512

Step 4: Verify signature.

gpg --verify apache-netbeans_24-1_all.deb.asc apache-netbeans_24-1_all.deb

gpg shows the signature to be correct, but warns that the key signing it is not trusted – this is usual for public key cryptography until you import to your key ring keys from enough people and they sign enough of each other’s keys.
Step 5: We can install the package:

sudo dpkg -i apache-netbeans_24-1_all.deb

Aramo reports intalling the package, NetBeans shows up in Aramo's menu, we can launch it and the window opens. Then, if the requirement of installing Java 17 is not fulfilled, NetBeans will show a dialog dog refusing to run without Java 17.
Installation successful but updates are not automatical through Aramo's Software Updates and have to be launched from the menu, at Help -> Check for updates..

VSCodium 1.96.4

License MIT. Website: https://code.visualstudio.com/
4 methods to install VSCodium: https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2024/01/install-vscodium-ubuntu/
Method 1: Install VSCodium via Snap - Discarded because of snap command being not found.
Method 2: Install VSCodium via Flatpak (Unofficial) - Requirements: flatpak.

$ flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/com.vscodium.codium.flatpakref

This method appears to work. Not verified because of being unofficial and having already installed VSCodium through method 4.
Method 3: Native .deb package - Not recommended because of lacking Software Updates.
Method 4: Install VSCodium via apt repository. This method works in Debian/Ubuntu/Trisquel from the source https://paulcarroty.gitlab.io/vscodium-deb-rpm-repo/debs vscodium main
Step 1. Download and importe the GPG key of the repository:

wget -qO - https://gitlab.com/paulcarroty/vscodium-deb-rpm-repo/raw/master/pub.gpg \
    | gpg --dearmor \
    | sudo dd of=/usr/share/keyrings/vscodium-archive-keyring.gpg

Step 2. Add the repository:

wget -qO - https://gitlab.com/paulcarroty/vscodium-deb-rpm-repo/raw/master/pub.gpg \
    | gpg --dearmor \
    | sudo dd of=/usr/share/keyrings/vscodium-archive-keyring.gpg

This command creates two files:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscodium.list
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscodium.list.save

Both files have the same content:

deb [ arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/vscodium-archive-keyring.asc ] ht
tps://paulcarroty.gitlab.io/vscodium-deb-rpm-repo/debs vscodium main

Step 3. Update repositories then install vscodium:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install codium

Installation successful.

Tried Sublime Code, too. Installation similar to that of VSCodium, it works on Aramo. However, I am not including it on this list because of being non-free. Also, if the user does not register the software there is a nagging dialog box.