PackageKit in Fedora 15 (beta)

[Florian Festi]

On 04/26/2011 05:21 PM, Matej Cepl wrote:
> Dne 26.4.2011 15:31, Kevin Kofler napsal(a):
>> AIUI, Suggests/Recommends was almost accepted in rpm.org (BTW, rpm5.org has
>> had it for ages), but the yum developers blocked it. :-/
Well, having Suggests/Recommends in RPM only does buy you anything as 
RPM will just ignore them. Yum (or any other depsolver) has the job of 
selecting the "right" set of packages.
> I have to defend Seth here ... in the last flamewar on this theme he
> admitted that introducing Suggests/Recommends would be question of half
> an hour (maybe he didn't mean it literally) and he would be willing to
> do it in the moment FESCO (or Board, or whoever is appropriate to make
> the decision) would tell him so
I think if anybody can come up with a exact description how they should 
look like and how they should work and can create some evidence that 
this is want we need and want implementing them is not the problem[*]. 
Until now no one has come up with a proposal and enough confidence.

As soon as one looks at the details it becomes less obvious what "we 
really want". Even whether the Suggests/Recommends should live in the 
packages or in comps or else where or both or both or in all three is 
still under debate. Do we need reverse relations? Do we really want to 
have exactly two levels of strength? Do we need "conditionals" (install 
an package only if two or more other packages are installed) as we had 
(have) in comps? Or should be trash the whole concept of comps and comps 
groups and start all over? When and how should they be evaluated? Do we 
need to save the users decision not to want the suggested package? What 
happens if the Suggests changes during an update?

If there really is some interest in getting any kind of weak 
requirements into yum and rpm answering the questions above is a first 
step (The list is not complete.) But from my perspective (as an RPM 
developer) "Fedora" has shown little interest in developing an own 
opinion about how the future of packaging and package handling should 
look like. So I am not too optimistic that we'll have Suggests or 
Recommends any time soon.

Florian

[*] Depending on the exact features implementing still can be tricky and 
require a lot of work. I doubt that it will be even remotely close to 
half an hour but nothing that cannot be handled.