[packagekit] Status of the APT backend

[Robin Norwood]

On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:59:27 +0000
Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

I think the 'application' concept is best handled in a webapp/web
service context, with PackageKit providing the client-side abstraction
of 'install this package'.  There's just too much data already that we
don't want to have to package up separately (desktop files, icons).
Plus a web app/service can store and deal with lots of other data the
packaging system doesn't want or need to deal with.

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching