PackageKit purpose?

[Tom Horsley]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:10:36 +0000
Timothy Murphy wrote:

> What exactly is the purpose of PackageKit?

I could but a sarcastic comment here, but I'd better not.
I find it to be the most annoying interface yet in a
long history of annoying interfaces to software package
management systems.

> Is it essential?

It is not essential, but lots of things expect it to
exist when they go to "helpfully" try and find missing
packages for you (print system looking for printer drivers,
bash looking for program you just typed the name of, etc).

> It is used by yum in some way?

It uses yum, it isn't used by yum. Mostly all it does
is interfere with yum by periodically locking the
updates while it is being "helpful".