AppStream Ideas and Thoughts

[James Rhodes]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 5:29 AM, Jos Poortvliet <jos at opensuse.org> wrote:
> On 2011-02-13 Matthias wrote:
>> Hi!
>> Wow, this looks very, very cool! I worked on similar issues but with
>> different solutions on my own project (Listaller).
>> Your project would AFAIK be in AppStreams scope and could be a valuable
>> extension for AppStream. I don't think AppStream does something "wrong
>> again".
>> I'll take a closer look at AppTools tomorrow, but from what you said, I
>> guess it would go well with AppStream.
>> Cheers
>>   Matthias
>>
>> P.S: It's so disappointing seeing all these great ideas come up NOW. They
>> still existed, but noone thought about joining forces. I developed
>> Listaller, which in a way acts similar to AppTool in some points but is
>> _completely_ different in concept.
>> I never heard of AppTool, which is sad cause from what I read it has some
>> really great ideas.
>
> Frankly, I disagree. While solving the rpm-vs-deb-vs-tgz-vs-whatever issue is
> important, I doubt it'll happen anytime soon - if there WAS a technical
> solution which also had the 'social features' to win everyone over, we
> would've seen it by now. And even if it is just not finished yet, I don't see
> why we should expand the scope of appstream to include an universal packaging
> format. It would just ensure appstream either never finishes or fails.

I believe that the reason these projects generally fail is because
there is no adoption by the mainstream distributions, usually, at
least from the projects that I've previously seen, because they don't
integrate with the underlying package system, or they provide an
inconsistent experience (like you can run an application from a Klik
package, but if you want to install it you need to go find a DEB /
RPM).  AppTools is designed such that it integrates with the
underlying package system where possible, and provide a consistent
user experience.

> Apstream has a fairly limited scope: make installation of END USER
> APPLICATIONS easier and more obvious for end users. And in doing that, try to
> share as much infrastructure between distro's as is realistically possible. So
> Yes for sharing screenshots, Yes for sharing ratings, but building a new
> packaging format - out of scope.

But while you'll have a consistent interface, you won't have a
consistent software selection.  We already know that different
distributions name packages differently (that's why AppTools has a
standardized package naming specification so that it's not an issue).
Even if you plan to give the user a consistent interface, there's no
guarantee they'll be able to go from one distro to another and install
their favourite software.  It might be named differently or not
available at all.

If on the other hand, you have a cross-distro packaging format, then
you can use any distribution's repository to find the software you
want and it doesn't matter, because you know you can install that
package safely on the target system.

Regards, James.