Linux and application installing

[James Antill]

On Mon, 2010-09-13 at 22:39 +0100, Richard Hughes wrote:
> On 13 September 2010 21:49, James Antill <james at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > So Seth spent half a day implementing a proof of concept:
> > http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/fedora-app-market-proof-of-concept/
> 
> Translations?

 They were part of the half day hack PoC, but yes to expand your answer
in a nice way:

 "If/when you propose this for inclusion as repodata, will you be adding
a bunch of information that wasn't in the half-day PoC"

...and the answer is: "Yes, there's lots of interesting data that could
be added."

> Offline queries?

 What about offline queries? I assume you know you can do them just fine
with yum on the current repodata, and I assume you haven't worked out a
way to magically install your "repodata in a package" packages when it
isn't installed and there is no network/CD.
 So, again, what are you trying to say?

> Co-operating with other distros?

 For the half-day PoC, really? But even then, Seth co-operated with
Fedora rel-eng's desire that repo-metadata actually be repo-metadata.
Which is the only thing anyone said is a "must fix" for Fedora.
 It's hard to see what other distros. have required as "must fix" with
app-install, given that none are using it.

> Call me biased, but doing things in yum because "it's the way it
> always used to be" carries little weight when the user experience just
> sucks really hard.

 Ok, you're biased.
 As you've been told numerous times, putting repodata in packages is a
terrible idea due to a bunch of known problems, including:

1. How do you keep it in sync. with the repo?

2. How do you deal with the reality of multiple repos?

3. How do you deal with disabling repos? Temporarily?

4. How does anadonda see it?

...this is why repodata is repodata, and we don't just ship
fedora-primary.rpm etc. This is not specific to yum, and would still be
the case if you finish Zif and Fedora moves to it (or
apt/zypper/whatever) instead.

>  I've been working on app-install now with other
> distro people for nearly two years.

 I'm not sure I'd be rushing to tell everyone that a half-day PoC was
better than my 2 years of work, but each to his own. And, again, it begs
the question ... why is no other distro. using it?
 But then maybe you didn't mean all those two years were spent doing
something which is fundamentally impossible to put in repodata, which is
the only "required change" I've seen from anyone in Fedora ($DEITY help
us with any of the other things we just wanted).

> Sometimes I wonder why I should deal with Fedora and all the politics
> when Ubuntu and Suse just ship something that works.

 Ubuntu recently got high praise from LWN for "Software Center" in 10.10
betas. It doesn't use PackageKit at all AFAICS (no PackageKit packages
are installed in my VM). It integrates tightly with apt (you know, like
showing package history ... like yumex does). Also their package
install/remove tool is not gpk-application, and their update tool is not
gpk-update-viewer.

 So I'm having a hard time working out what you mean.