[packagekit] Request for a (small?) packagekit enhancement

[simd at arcor.de]

Hello,
firstly to say packagekit seems to be a nice looking and relatively fast solution. Nice work!

However I have a request. 

What would be really useful to me is a simple log file recording all the *top level* packages I choose to install / remove. It wouldn't be a huge amount of effort I think. Something recording lines like:

install firefox                                    # 2008.04.24 12.30                    (timestamps allow me to correlate with yum.log)
install wonderful_new_program   # 2008.04.24 12.30
remove wonderful_new_program  # 2008.04.25 12.35

My reasons. I use Fedora. Fedora is released every 6 months, and releases are obsoleted after 12 months. So 1-2 times per year I have to upgrade. On the one hand this is ok, since it's a spring clean. On the other hand, it can be a real pain. What I want is that my new environment, after the upgrade looks as much like the previous one as possible, with all my favourite programs, at minimum effort. 

At the moment I have a script, load a basic version of Fedora, and then the script runs yum to fill in the other bits. You with me? The log in the above format gives me the results of what I have loaded over the last release, which I can then just edit and use in a simple script with yum. 

Of course there is the existing yum.log, but that's at far too detailed a level, listing all the dependency rpms. I'm really not interested in what has been pulled in as dependencies, or not unless I run into problems. I just want to know the top level packages I have loaded. The dependencies probably will change anyway.

Actually I had already got this, by writing a simple plugin for yum, but it would be nice if it was supported by packagekit too (which doesn't seem to support yum plugins). Or, of course, you could always give packagekit an api for plugins.

Of course, going forward, what would be (at least for me) REALLY nice, is that out of packagekit I could export this sort of information in, say, an xml format (e.g. similar to the comps.xml that anaconda uses), and then get the anaconda chaps to allow it to read this file in during a new installation (e.g. from a common boot partition or from a stick), and amend it's default packages to include all the packages I have in my old environment... Then the new environment looks just like my old one straight out of the box!!!  But maybe that's a bit too much wishful thinking... And you guys aren't the anaconda team.

Anyway any help in this direction would be much appreciated. Maybe you can see a better way of achieving this.

Best regards,
Simon Darlington

Jetzt komfortabel bei Arcor-Digital TV einsteigen: Mehr Happy Ends, mehr Herzschmerz, mehr Fernsehen! Erleben Sie 50 digitale TV Programme und optional 60 Pay TV Sender, einen elektronischen Programmführer mit Movie Star Bewertungen von TV Movie. Außerdem, aktuelle Filmhits und spannende Dokus in der Arcor-Videothek. Infos unter www.arcor.de/tv