What happened to pup?

[Kyrre Ness Sjobak]

søn, 22.05.2005 kl. 19.06 skrev Emmanuel Seyman:
> On Sun, May 22, 2005 at 06:29:51PM +0200, Kyrre Ness Sjobak wrote:
> >
> > So what? The user installs what the user needs withot crying "help" on
> > every forum. The user is happy. Period.
> 
> I think you're over-estimating the capabilities of the average user here.
> 
> > One of the main points was that i should be able to download an install
> > file once, and run on whatever distro suits me best.
> 
> If the application is FOSS, the optimal way of installing it is by
> packaging it and putting the rpm in Fedora Extras.
> If it isn't, an rpm should be availible which installs on any
> LSB-compliant Linux distribution.

The point wasn't to replace yum or rpm or repositories - it was to
create a user-friendly (read: not command-line. i *personally* love the
command line, but then i am not an average user) frontend to yum
install. Yum update would be handeled by pup.

It is not like my idea for an interface is set in stone. It should
probably be a standard format of metadata, which can be shared between
many frontends. It was an idea about how to present theese things to the
user, in a way the user understands:
- Which rpm's do we need?
- Fixing deps
- Displaying license
- Installing

Today, this is done through the command line. Now, try explaining to
somebody who hasn't got a clue about computers, how to install a piece
of software today:
- open a command line
- login as root (su -)
- find the correct package by yum search or other means
- install it by yum install
- possibly configure it
- keep it up2date manually
Or worse:
- find and download an rpm
- double click it, find that foo and bar is missing
- go find foo and bar
- install foo and bar
- find that bar needs baz
- find baz
- install baz
- install foo and bar
- install the initial rpm
Or EVEN worse:
- find and download an rpm packaged within a shell archive to present
the lisence
- press enter the exact nr. of times to not overshoot the "Accept?:
[y/N]"
- install the rpm produced in the way descibed above.

Now with this system:
- Go to packages.download.redhat.com
- click "extras"
- find the correct package
- look at at nice webpage describing the package
- click the "install program" link
- save the install file on the desktop, open in XXX/click "open in XXX"
- enter root-password
- See the license (possibly the GPL), accept it
- select witch portions of the app you need if it is packaged into more
than one rpm
- install through yum
- have pup update it automatically throug yum

Which method would you describe to a newbie? Ofcource, in the ideal
world, every computer would be delivered with a technican/secretary,
hiding within the case when not in use... Or not.

This is not in any way replacing yum/rpm - it is merely a frontend for
them.

Just trying to think outside of the synaptic box.

Kyrre