[packagekit] an honest look at gnome-packagekit

[Matthias Clasen]

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 5:30 AM, Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:

>> - nuke the update viewer overview
>
> Hmm, whilst I agree this isn't very useful with rawhide, with F9 it
> looks rather pretty - unless the actions "refresh" and history are put
> somewhere else then they'll just clutter the next screen. Maybe we could
> put them in a menu or something.

I think we want to put them somewhere out of (initial) view. The motivation
for scrapping (or at least reconsidering) the overview are:

a) The "multiple windows" problem again, while going from overview to details
and back doesn't resize, it still gives the impression that there is
not a single
place to go and handle updates.

b) The main way to get to the update viewer is via the status icon. If
I come from
there, I have already made the choice to 'view' the updates, instead
of installing them right away, so I am probably interested in the
details. If I were just interested
in the breakdown of how many security vs bug fix updates, those
numbers are already in the tooltip on the icon (I think).

>> - display download and installation progress inside the package list
>
> This doesn't work particularly well with the GpkClient shared GPG and
> EULA code - it can be done, but why do you think this would be better?

There are some aspects to this:

a) it looks really slick when done well (see OS X, or the mockup
someone posted earlier)

b) It allows to display meaningful progress parallel operations, e.g.
downloading
several packages while others are already installing

c) The main point is to fight the "multiple resizing and jumping
windows" syndrome.
The progress window is just too busy.

>> - always ask before installing a file
>
> Well, in 0.2.0 if the user trusts the gpg key, and he's saved auth, then
> he won't be prompted. He'll only be prompted when the gpg key is
> untrusted. Or by ask, do you mean just a polite "Do you want to install
> foo?" rather than authenticate?

Yes, was thinking of "Do you want to install foo ?". Also, if we could
find a way to avoid installing Fedora rpms on Suse, and vice versa,
that would be nice. But I think
that may be hard, while at the same time still allowing third-party
packages to be
installed.


Matthias