AppStream Ideas and Thoughts

[James Rhodes]

Hi Everyone,

I guess I'm going to be barging in here with my non-standard ideas and
heretical thoughts.  Over the last 12 months I've been working on and
off a project called AppTools
(http://code.google.com/p/apptools-dist).  It was basically my attempt
to redesign the way applications are installed on Linux; a project
which I underestimated the time it would take to complete, just a
*little* ;)

The goals of this project was essentially to offer a package system
that let you deal with applications in every way you might reasonably
expect to, such as:

* Running applications from their packages (done via FUSE, a custom
filesystem and some sandboxing stuff).
* Install applications per user or system-wide.
* Perform the above from a single file (you shouldn't need to download
a new format depending on what you want to do).
* Reset applications that have been run in their package to the
original package state (resettable filesystem).
* Download applications off the internet without needing to install
repositories, but still automatically get updates for those
applications.
* Do all of this without hiding data away in a database somewhere; it
should all be accessible and readable on the filesystem (each
application should have it's own directory for it's data).

There really is a lot more to it than just the list above, especially
in terms of design details.  I suggest you check out the wiki on the
website above if you're interested in the nitty gritty (of which
almost none of it is locked in; suggestions welcome).

My concerns with AppStream in it's current format (based on what I've
read on http://distributions.freedesktop.org/wiki/AppStream/Implementation)
is that it suffers the same issues as the existing repositories
systems, except that now you have a single repository format for all
systems (which is a step forward none the less).  However, it still
suffers from portability (can I take my packages and give them to
someone else running a completely different distro?), repositories
reliance (can I install and resolve dependencies with the package
belonging to a repository?) and of course it doesn't tackle running
applications from packages (but that might be out of scope for
AppStream).

Let me know opinions or thoughts anyone has on AppTools and it's
applicability to the AppStream project.  I think the design principles
as they stand are similar and that the code base of AppTools could
assist in the project (although checking at "How this will work?"
page, possibly not that much; depends on how you're implementing your
package format).

Regards, James Rhodes.