Today I found myself with Picasa for Linux (3.0 beta) not allowing me to login to web albums, even if I could login without problems from the web browser.
After googling a bit, it seems that Picasa 3.0 does not work anymore due to some Google+ related changes. On the other hand it looks like Picasa on Linux is abandoned ie: 3.0 vs 3.8 on Windows.
Picasa 3.8 has some interesting new features. Why not a Linux version? Picasa for Linux is no more than Picasa for Windows bundled with wine plus some minor changes. Ok, lets do one ourselves.
I started by unpacking the original rpm and replacing the “Picasa3″ folder in “Program Files” with the tarred content of the “Program Files/Picasa3″ resulting from installing Picasa 3.8 with wine. That worked, but it requires you to create this tarball.
Then I went one step further: why not trying installing the newer Picasa 3.8 inside the build section of the .spec file? Thanks to the wpkg project I figured how to run the installer in unattended mode. The Build Service Tips & Tricks page explains how to run something that requires an X server using XVfb.
So the spec file first unpacks the original Linux rpm in the builroot. Then runs the Windows-based installer in unattended mode using a temporary wine prefix, and then copies the new installed Picasa over to the buildroot, replacing the files in the original rpm. We use the official rpm as a base because it contains a custom wine and some other Linux integrations, however it would be worth to see if it behaves better with newer wine versions.
You can find the resulting .spec file in my home project.
I can’t redistribute the original rpm and the windows installer, so I include a fetch.sh (just like the spec file for the nvidia driver does) that will fetch those binary files.
To build it:
osc co home:dmacvicar picasa
# get the files I can't redistribute
./fetch
osc build openSUSE_Factory
Now install it and you should have Picasa 3.8 on Linux, which also solves the issue of login into Picasaweb:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
