[packagekit] PackageKit & Debian, Was: External dependencies, DeviceKit-power and GNOME Power Manager

[Martin Pitt]

Hello Richard,

Thanks for clarifying the "refuse to accept" bit, which just seems to
be a misunderstanding then.

Richard Hughes [2008-11-26 11:25 +0000]:
> What sort of questions do you want to ask the user? 

A typical question is the one for an administrator password when
installing things like mysql or a wiki.

Another is if the admin modified a configuration file, and a new
package version also ships a different one than before. This sort of
conflict can't be resolved automatically, but needs admin intervention
(typical answers: keep mine (default), use new version from distro,
show diff, start shell, some packages also allow a 3-way merge).

> Will any of these people http://www.packagekit.org/pk-profiles.html
> know what the answers should be?

For assigning an admin password: yes. (These debconf questions are
properly translated and everything)

For a modified conffile: Users who don't understand what /etc/foo is
won't have touched it in the first place and thus never see the
question.

The problem is that above profiles don't include users which are
experienced with Unix/Linux administration, or even just users who
know how to, and do, backup /etc/, for example. If you say "PK is just
for non-technical users", then you will always need to keep a more
advanced package management tool which can only use rpm or dpkg directly.

This is why I'd also like to see this kind of "user interaction" built
into the protocol. So far I can e. g. use PK in jockey, our device
driver package management tool, to keep it reasonably distro agnostic
in the upstream branch (as discussed in the LinuxFoundation
workgroup), but it currently puts a heavy limitation on what kind of
packages you can install with it in dpkg based distros.

Thanks, and have a good day,

Martin

-- 
Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)
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