[packagekit] Listing all packages

[Thomas Wood]

On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 19:13 +0000, Richard Hughes wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 17:43 +0000, Thomas Wood wrote:
> > There doesn't appear to be a way for a PackageKit client to request a
> > list of all the available, or all installed packages, from PackageKit.
> > 
> > Is this intentional, or should the functionality be available through
> > the search functions?
> 
> Well, no! What do you need the package list for? The SearchX functions
> shouldn't search for strings less that two chars, and some backends
> limit the results to the first 100. If you need this functionality I
> think a new function might be sane, without a search term but with
> filter functionality.

So I've just been discussing how this requirement came about, and how it
may or not be solved.

Firstly, our front end will mostly consist of lists of packages, split
into logical groups. However, the current PackageKit groups enum does
not quite cover the sort of separation our front end requires.

Secondly, our front end only wants to display a small subsection of the
entire repository. This can be thought of as "end user applications",
which may or may not be GUI. However, in all likely hood most of them
will be GUI applications, but the method to determine them will be
specific to our distribution as there are no standardised section names
in Ipkg.


The second problem is quite easily fixed by defining the "gui" filter at
compile time. However, I am not sure whether it is acceptable to add
configure flags for individual back ends. This could easily be done with
a small patch instead.

The first problem is a little more difficult to solve. We would
obviously prefer the back end to be able to return just the packages the
front end will display, but currently there is no way to do this within
the groups the front end wants to display.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

Regards,

Thomas


-- 
OpenedHand Ltd.

Unit R Homesdale Business Center / 216-218 Homesdale Road /
Bromley / BR1 2QZ / UK             Tel: +44 (0)20 8819 6559

Expert Open Source For Consumer Devices - http://o-hand.com/
------------------------------------------------------------