gnome software shell search provider? [Re: Is Gnome Software ready for primetime?]

[Kevin Kofler]

Michael Scherer wrote:
> As i say, we mostly have a fleet of laptop, and of course, the situation
> would be different if this was a set of workstation, but alas, this is
> not the case.

It's true that the problem is harder for laptops, which are often more 
loosely administrated by necessity.

> Then this mean there is a problem in dependency. If I install kevin-
> simulator-1.0 that requires libmichael1.1 while libmichael1.0 is
> installed, either it need it and it will pull it, or it doesn't need and
> it will not pull it. This also ask the whole question of having non
> compatible library, etc, but I think we already answered that question
> with the update policy and need to keep a proper compatible ABI.

The update policy only requires BACKWARDS compatibility, i.e. that stuff 
built against libmichael1.0 will also work against libmichael1.1 if the 
latter is pushed as an update. For some libraries, it is totally impractical 
to require FORWARD compatibility (i.e. requiring that stuff built against 
libmichael1.1 will also run against libmichael1.0). So it is normal that 
updates depend on earlier updates.

> At least, the new system bring coherency, you know that everything is up
> to date after the reboot. And again, if you like the previous way, you
> can still opt-out of the system.

The complaint in this thread is that GNOME Software does NOT allow you to 
opt-out, you have to switch to completely different software if you want to 
opt out of offline updates. (FYI, the plan for Apper upstream is to support 
both online and offline updates (currently, it supports only online 
updates), allowing the user to really opt-in or opt-out of offline updates. 
On the Fedora KDE end, we will then probably ship offline updates as opt-
in/default-off rather than opt-out/default-on, at least that's our current 
consensus.)

>> It also violates the principle of least surprise.
> 
> In what way ? If the system clearly say "we are gonna need to reboot to
> apply thoses updates", it is hard to say that you are surprised. And the
> principe of least surprise would be violated if we didn't followed the
> dominant paradigm, which is still windows afaik.

Even that "dominant paradigm" stopped requiring reboots for each and every 
update eons ago. A user does not expect updates to require reboots, even 
less a GNU/Linux user.

        Kevin Kofler