[packagekit] Notes on UI notifications

[Trever Fischer]

On Wednesday 10 December 2008 02:53:33 pm Jud Craft wrote:
> (Note:  little actual knowledge of packagekit design)
>
> When PackageKit fires a notification to the user using LibNotify (I
> believe that's right), is it possible to set the notification so that
> it will not time out?
>
> Something critical such as "Your system has just been auto-updated"
> should not be missed by the user -- wouldn't it make more sense to
> require them to manually close that popup, as opposed to letting it
> fade out?  (On F9's Gnome-PackageKit, I believe its popups currently
> time out).
>
> It is true that it's too late for user decision to change the
> program's action:  by the time the popup arrives, it's too late.  But
> a user should never miss realizing that their system has been updated,
> if they step away from the computer for a few minutes for example.

PackageKit is split into a ui-independent daemon that runs as root and 
performs the actual package installation and system updates. The notification 
part you refer to is PackageKit-gnome, a separate group of programs that put a 
nice Gnome-based UI over the PackageKit API. Its these programs that run on a 
timer and ask PackageKit to see if there are any new updates. If any are 
available, the UI bits tell packagekit to upgrade.

There is a small bit of control with automatic updates, in that the user can 
chose 'All', 'Security' or no updates at all to be applied in the background. 
Preventing the 'system has been updated' one you mention from going away is 
possible as well. However, I'm neither a user or developer of PK-Gnome, so I 
might be wrong on a few of these ui specifics :)
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