[packagekit] Suggestion

[PEDRO MACANAS VALVERDE]

-----Mensaje original-----
De: packagekit-bounces at lists.freedesktop.org
[mailto:packagekit-bounces at lists.freedesktop.org] En nombre de Richard
Hughes
Enviado el: viernes, 08 de febrero de 2008 17:14
Para: PackageKit users and developers list
Asunto: Re: [packagekit] Suggestion

On Fri, 2008-02-08 at 14:52 +0100, PEDRO MACANAS VALVERDE wrote:
>> YES. I.e. I use Huawei E220 USB MODEM (I used before a cablemodem,
but
> in my new home I cannot get cable) offered by Vodafone. I downloaded
> the Vodafone package, that depends on wvdial and other packages.

>Is the vodaphone package free software? 

You can see it at
https://forge.vodafonebetavine.net/projects/vodafonemobilec/ , where you
can read "This project is under GNU General Public License (GPL)". So,
it is FREE SOFTWARE ;-)

What does it do?

It is a GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA device manager. This is, you can use the Huawei
E220 to connect to Vodafone mobile Internet using Linux.

> Could it be shipped on the distro CD in the future to avoid this
problem ever occurring?  

I think you can ship it, because is GPL.

>> I cannot connect to the Internet to download an updated package list
> (this would be done in Internet using the computer at work  - and a
> web server ?-

>This is the main flaw in your idea. Lets say the vodaphone package
you've downloaded has an explicit depends on vwdial. We can tell that
from the header of the vodaphone package.

This is what appears in Synaptic when I "dpkg install"-ed the Vodafone
*.deb package. It appears as a broken package. In any case, I could
manually download all the dependency packages, but they are a lot for
this. I would prefer a program that would do automatically it (although
in more than one step or downloads ).

>What we can't tell is what wvdial requires (recursive implicit
dependencies) without the metadata ("package lists") from the
repository. 

I could download this metadata using my Windows computer. In any case,
the Synaptic dependency tree is very complete ( I have got it very
updated).

>It might be the case that wvdial also needs wvdial-common and an
updated ppp package before it can be installed. So the problem now
becomes how do I cache the metadata and update that offline, 

It can be done online in Windows (Windows fork, in a similar way to
Cygwin).

>and also then requeue a transaction on the next time round.

Or detect the broken dependencies in Linux to download the packages in
the other computer (in my case, in the Windows computer at work).

>I think the real solution is to get the needed stuff on the distro
install CD.

I hope all the packages can be in the CDs. In my case (Debian) more than
2 CDs. And I cannot use Debian Installer Loader, because it is a PPP
connection (instead of a DHCP connection) to the Internet in the Linux
computer.

I think another compact solution can be found (although I would have to
download more than one time, to fulfil dependencies).

Regards.

Pedro.