[packagekit] Unsupported package groups/filters

[Andreas]

On Sun, 2007-09-09 at 11:11 +0100, Richard Hughes wrote:

> Quality.If you send me your preferred username I'll give you commit
> access to the development server.
That's cool. Just wait till I'm done implementing the most important
features, I'll contact you as soon as I have searching, installing and
removing ready.

> What sort of groups does it have for example? Is it a subset of the
> group enums or whole new set? Could you list what groups enums would
> be good for you?
The packages groups are totally different in Arch. They're not really
there to be descriptive but to enable users to install multiple 
required packages easily (e.g. pacman -S gnome installs the gnome
desktop). I just asked the archlinux team to include such groups like
those PackageKit uses in future package builds as it wouldn't require
any changes to libalpm/pacman and could be done whenever the need to
rebuild a package arises. But I don't think I'll
be successful, and even if it'd take a year till all packages are
modified that way.
Actually the packages in archlinux' cvs are organized in folders
like network/editors etc.. That's why I thought there was an appropriate
tagging by groups. Never using the groups feature and just recently
checking the packages for it, it turned out to be different...

> I've deliberately not set the API in stone, and won't for quite a
> while. So, putting my money where my mouth is:
> 
> s=GetSupportedFilters()
> where s="development;installed" or "installed" or "development;installed;gui"
> 
> s=GetGroupList()
> where s="accessories;system;other"
> 
> We can easily hook these into the backend at dlopen time, much like
> how we automatically get the supported list (a fake job).
> 

Despite they don't fix the problem with archlinux those functions sound
good and are worth adding if it helps other package manager like yum.
Having a group "All" might perhaps help. On the other hand
it breaks the design principle by not actually being a group.

Let's first see how the Archlinux guys react.

Regards,
	Andreas