[packagekit] Package update policy

[Robin Norwood]

Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 15:26 -0400, Robin Norwood wrote:
>>  o Daily
>>  o Weekly
>>  o Never
>
> I really think weekly is too long, even for non-critical updates.

Really?  I'm thinking plain jane, ordinary desktop users.  Do they
really care if they wait a week for the latest firefox?  Do they even
pay attention to what version they are running?  These are people who
use their systems to browse the internets and do email I'm talking
about.  Getting security updates out in a timely manner is important.
Also, the people running mirrors will probably thank you for the
'weekly' option.

>>  [] Ask me before updating.
>> -------------------------------
>
> Essential. Maybe hourly might also be an option?

See my other email.  I really cannot imagine anyone wanting hourly
package updates.  Sure, people who are really 'into' the latest and
greatest can have the applet on their panel and click it.  I'm not
talking about preventing them from getting updates...but...hourly
automatic notification?

/me remembers the rhn-applet 'throbber' that (for awhile) checked every
5 minutes or so.

>> So, assuming one of the first two options are ticked, updates are
>> checked for periodically.  If the 'ask' option is ticked, a window is
>> popped up (assuming a user is running the pk-applet) to interactively
>> install the updates.  Otherwise, the updates are downloaded and
>> installed in the background, with the state of any pk-applet showing
>> progress.
>
> Sure.
>
>> A nice 'future enhancement' might be another checkbox that says "Apply
>> security updates only"...pending backend support, of course.
>
> Well, we can do this already with UpdatePackage as we can install
> individual updates (which we get from the status of GetUpdates).

Do any of the backends yet distinguish between 'security' updates and
regular ones?

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching