[packagekit] PackageKitExtra - package abstraction

[Patryk Zawadzki]

On Feb 19, 2008 11:37 AM, Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-02-19 at 10:37 +0100, Patryk Zawadzki wrote:
> > On Feb 18, 2008 6:59 PM, Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2008-02-18 at 12:09 +0100, Sebastian Heinlein wrote:
> > > > To achive this all .desktop files are extracted from the archive and
> > > > stored in a cache with some extra information. Currently all desktop
> > > > files are shiped in the app-install-data package so that the cache can
> > > > be rebuild afterwards again.
> > That's a horrible horrible hack and would be a huge pain to maintain
> > in a consistent and up-to-date way for any distro with daily updates
> > (think "* unstable" or always-in-development distros).
> Well yes, but we need to get the metadata from somewhere - and none of
> the repo structures give us this sort of localised and icon information.
> Worst case scenario, we just display the box icon and en_US text.

An online service would be more useful (with pk pulling data on
demand). I for one refuse to extract desktop files and icons from 50k+
packages just to shove them into another package. I would also not
install such a package as it's a great way to waste disk space and
bandwidth (why would I need all the desktop files when I only use 20
apps? and each contains its own desktop files).

> > Just ask repo indices for a package that contains a particular binary?
> > Looks like backend's job.
> Sure, but:
>
> [hughsie at hughsie-laptop libpackagekit]$ pkcon search file /usr/bin/ftp
> installed    ftp                  i386    0.17-43.fc8     installed    The standard UNIX FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client................]
> available    ftp                  i386    0.17-43.fc8     updates      The standard UNIX FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client
> search-file runtime was 4.6 seconds
>
> We would need to cache this to make it sub 200ms.

Sure but:

echo "Command $FOO not found, retype immediately to try and install it."

...certainly takes less than 200ms and does not trigger any slowdowns
in case I mistype "cat" as "car"

-- 
Patryk Zawadzki
PLD Linux Distribution