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Scott Severance
Asked: 2016-05-14 15:05:04 +0800 CST

Python 3 AppIndicator3: What is the dependency?

  • 772

I'm packaging an app I wrote in Python 3 which uses:

from gi.repository import AppIndicator3

As I'm listing the dependencies, I have been unable to determine what package contains AppIndicator3. I guessed python-appindicator, but looking at that package it appears that it's for Python 2, not Python 3.

Which package should I depend on?

indicator

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You're importing from gi.repository. The file for this module is:

    $ python3 -c 'import gi.repository, sys; print (sys.modules["gi.repository"].__file__)'
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/gi/repository/__init__.py

    And that file comes from:

    $ dpkg -S $(python3 -c 'import gi.repository, sys; print (sys.modules["gi.repository"].__file__)')
python3-gi: /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/gi/repository/__init__.py

    So, the package you need (at least on 14.04) is python3-gi.

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  2. I followed the procedure described in muru's answer on Ubuntu 18.04 with GNOME desktop, and got precisely the same output as muru reports for Ubuntu 14.04:

    python3-gi: /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/gi/repository/__init__.py

    However, in order to run a script containing the line 

    from gi.repository import AppIndicator3

    I had to install not only python3-gi but also libappindicator3-dev:

    sudo apt install libappindicator3-dev
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  3. For my own indicators, I use gir1.2-appindicator3-0.1 as dependency. If I recall correctly libappindicator3-dev is for development. Either one works in my experience.

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  4. just open a terminal Ctrl+Alt+T and type

    sudo apt-get install gir1.2-appindicator3-0.1

    No need to install full development package.
    Tested on ubuntu 20.04.

    How I arrived at this?

    I tried sudo apt install libappindicator3-dev and pressed 'n' (not to install). From the package list the first was gir1.2-appindicator3-0.1 so installed just that.

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