[packagekit] Status of the APT backend

[Richard Hughes]

On Wed, 2008-02-20 at 14:43 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> For PackageKit to be successful it has to focus on nailing one use
> case successfully, and the one that it started out with it
> (semi-)automatic updates. Trying to shoehorn fully-fledged
> "show-me-everything-about-the-packaging-system" tools like synaptic or
> yumex on top of it is causing considerable feature drag. Just see the
> feature requests we have seen here recently, about support lifetimes
> and whatnot.

Sure. I'm totally guilty of that, so I appreciate your mail.

> There is a very real danger that PackageKit will end up as a failure
> if we don't focus on the 'packaging system neutral updater' use case.

Well, I think searching and installing applications is also a core use
case, but maybe we have to go back to the original use-cases and see how
well we are doing.

Richard.