[packagekit] Multiple Package installation UI

[Tim Lauridsen]

Robin Norwood wrote:
> On Fri, 16 May 2008 09:12:09 -0400
> Casey Dahlin <cdahlin at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
>> The FAQ said you should post to this list if you have an idea for how 
>> the UI should work for installing multiple packages at once. I have
>> such an idea.
>>
>> My idea involves more changes to yum or whatever is running beneath 
>> package kit than package kit itself.
>>
>> It would work like this:
>>
>> 1) When the user clicks a package, it begins installing immediately
>> (as it does now).
>> 2) The user can still browse for more packages while the package is 
>> downloading (this is the major change: write operations shouldn't
>> block read only operations in the underlying package manager).
>> 3) When the user clicks another package, it gets added to the task
>> queue
> 
> Yup.  The thing is, we either need to cache the package data, so we can
> browse while yum is doing other things, or someone needs to make it so
> that yum can do query operations at the same time that it does
> install/update/remove operations.  Right now doing both at once is
> expressly forbidden as 'not safe' by the yum developers, and I don't
> think it's on their roadmap to change this anytime soon. I'm not sure
> about other backends.
> 
> -RN
> 

This is the way to system DOOM :), i dont think this will happen i yum, 
there are to many thing there can go wrong and mess up the system, the 
system safety matters most IMO. It is the same issue with some of the 
other backends, the may be can do it, but is it a sane path to take, i 
dont think so.

Of cause you can catch all package information in the client and put the 
installation requests in a queue, but with posibillity to doing updates 
and removal too, it will end up in a nightmare.

I think it will be better to implement a transaction queue, so the user 
can select the stuff to be done and the process the queue, it will be a 
lot safer and faster. The user can just click away and doing no harm 
before validating the queue and process it.

Tim