[packagekit] Caching of repository metadata (esp. Yum)

[Richard Hughes]

On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 11:05 +0100, Sebastian Heinlein wrote:
> Not knowing how long a PackageKit transaction will take, makes it quite
> uncomfortable to write applications. A small Resolve call could take
> seconds, minutes or hours.

Right, as you're not sure if it's going to download a file or just
return from hot cache.

> I would really like to see a separation of cache manipulating and
> read-only transactions. Is it possible to process multiple transactions
> concurrently with the spawn or native backend?

No, neither. It would be a little tricky to add, although much simpler
for a native backend.

I was pondering this last night when I was meant to be sleeping.

What about an optional SetCache() that can be done after GetTid(), just
like we currently do with SetLocale()?

Options being:

* FORCE = Force network refresh, error out if unavailable
* ALLOW = Allow network activity if required (default)
* CACHE = Word completely from cache, error out if invalid

One to think about.

Richard.