QualCoder is an open-source qualitative analysis program available on Linux, MacOS, and Windows operating systems. If you're a Linux user, QualCoder affords qualitative analysis in the comfort of your own desktop environment — custom status bar, tiling window manager, and all!

But, just launching QualCoder means opening a terminal, navigating to your QualCoder installation, activating QualCoder’s virtual environment, finally entering qualcoder &, and closing the terminal. That’s too many steps.

With a script and a configuration file, though, you can launch QualCoder without touching a terminal.

What You Need to Have and Know

• An installation of QualCoder. Colin Curtain, the program's author, provides instructions in QualCoder's GitHub repository.
• A program launcher. You will use it to launch QualCoder. Consider dmenu, Rofi, or Wofi.
• How to navigate and administer a Linux system with a terminal.
• A text editor.

First: Run QualCoder From Anywhere

To run QualCoder without touching a terminal, you have to be able to launch it without manually navigating to its directory and activating its virtual environment. If you script these actions, you can run QualCoder by just running the script.

On Linux, PATH is a global variable listing the directories your system can find executable programs in. If you put a script in one of those directories, you can run QualCoder from any directory.

Creating the QualCoder Script

1. Create a file named qualcoder in your preferred text editor.

2. Copy the Bash script below and paste it into qualcoder.

   #!/bin/bash
   
   QUALCODER_DIRECTORY="/home/aldats/Documents/qualcoder"
   
   source $QUALCODER_DIRECTORY/qualcoder/bin/activate
   $QUALCODER_DIRECTORY/qualcoder/bin/qualcoder &

3. Replace the value for QUALCODER_DIRECTORY on line 3 with the full path to your QualCoder installation.

4. Mark the file qualcoder as executable. This can be done with the command chmod +x qualcoder.

5. In a terminal, enter the command ./qualcoder. QualCoder should launch.

Moving the QualCoder Script to a PATH Directory

1. In a terminal, enter the command echo $PATH. This prints the value of your PATH variable.
2. Observe output similar to below. Paths are separated by a colon (:).

   /home/aldats/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin

3. Pick one of the paths in your PATH output. I picked /home/aldats/.local/bin.
4. Move your qualcoder script to the directory at the path you picked.
5. In a new terminal, enter the command qualcoder. QualCoder should launch.

Second: Run QualCoder From a Launcher

On Linux, launchers generate a list of launchable programs by looking for special desktop files in directories like /usr/share/applications/ and ~/.local/share/applications/. If you make a desktop file for QualCoder in one of these directories, you can run QualCoder with a launcher.

1. Create a file named qualcoder.desktop in your preferred text editor.
2. Copy the below text and paste it into qualcoder.desktop.

   [Desktop Entry]
   Name=QualCoder
   Exec=qualcoder
   Type=Application
   StartupWMCClass=qualcoder

3. Move your qualcoder.desktop file to a directory your launcher will find desktop files in, like /usr/share/applications/ or ~/.local/share/applications/.
4. In your launcher, look up “QualCoder” and launch.

After following these steps, you should be able to launch QualCoder using your preferred launcher — and without a terminal!