The new gnome-software application

[Ryan Lerch]

On 03/05/2013 04:02 PM, Richard Hughes wrote:
> On 5 March 2013 20:02, Ryan Lerch <rlerch at redhat.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> Have you got any further information on the design thinking behind the "OS
>> Updates"? will that just install all the non-applications packages that are
>> available at the time?
> At the moment, the heuristic is "it's an app, new entry, otherwise
> stick in os-updates" -- so it includes stuff like -devel, -debuginfo
> -libs etc. Not ideal at all, but that's the price we pay for having
> everything so granular as packages.
>
>>   furthermore, if one of my applications needs a
>> separate package updated as a dependency, will it install the entire "OS
>> update"? or will it just update the packages are required to update that
>> application?
> Just the required packages, not everything. And it currently updates
> the deps without even asking, which is a feature not a bug.
IMO, this needs some further thought and feedback to the user. In the 
current package scenario, what if the application that I am updating has 
the kernel as a dep (somewhere in the dep chain). This might result in 
the system also silently and automatically updating some additional 
"applications" that the user did not specify to update, even though they 
are in the list of applications. In essence, a simple application 
installation may silently force something equivalent to an "OS Update" 
when all the user wanted to do was install an update to firefox.
>> Finally, even though they aren't GUI applications, should standalone
>> terminal applications (e.g. mutt, irissi or vim) also be considered an
>> "Application"?
> Nope, applications have desktop files that get shown in the GUI menus,
> with a few things blacklisted. Anything other than than leads you down
> a slippery slope where stuff like openldap and abrt become
> applications, and then you've got no concept of a base-os any more.
> It's my personal opinion of course, but I've been thinking about a
> good way of delineating and defining applications|base-os for quite
> some time. If something like GVim ships a desktop file, then it'll get
> included, vim not so. irissi is a power user tool, and those kind of
> people are quite comfortable doing "yum install irissi" or "zif
> install vim"
>
THis is definitely something that may be diffennt between different 
distros. At the moment, (i know it's pre-alpha) gnome-software currently 
lists "Web" (aka epiphany) is listed as a core application (i.e. i cant 
install it even though it is the list of installed apps), even though 
that application is not even installed by default on Fedora.

This policy (what is an application, and what is a core application) is 
something that should be clearly defined somewhere, and possibly have 
the option for Fedora to tweak the policy.

cheers,
ryanlerch