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

[Richard Hughes]

On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 14:26 +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Graham probably doesn’t need PackageKit on Debian (unattended-upgrades
> will do the work without scaring him)

Sure, but PackageKit would schedule the unattended-upgrade -- using the
session idle information, and the network state.

> However, I think Bevan is someone who will run into trouble without
> this. Bevan is probably running Debian testing or unstable. He likes to
> tweak his systems, and often finds some tutorials on the web that will
> include modifications to configuration files or installing packages from
> custom sources.

Yes, sounds about right.

> Bevan has installed a custom kernel image from the web to support some
> specific hardware, when udev gets upgraded in a way that will make this
> kernel fail.

I'm not sure this is a good example. It shouldn't be possible to
introduce failures like this with good depend check on the the package.

> That said, I think it is very restrictive to limit the scope of a tool
> to a set of imaginary users

Not imaginary at all. The names might be slightly modified, but Bevan is
a good friend of mine, and the other two are members of my family.

> GNOME has always been about providing
> simple and powerful tools for everyone, not for some classes of users.
> If the tool is better for Suzan, it should also be better for me.

No, this logic is false, as you are not a typical user. I've done
substantial _real_ user testing, and you might be surprised with the
results.

> If, as
> the package’s maintainer, I can’t use it, I fail to see how I could
> improve it for our users or help them with bug reports. I could only
> imagine what their requirements are and would remain disconnected from
> their reality.

You can, when you do testing, and interact with real users on a daily
basis. It is possible to put yourself in the mindset of a user, but it's
much better to do real world testing.

You cannot create a tool that is suitable for all users. There are times
when I use yum directly, where I'm trying to do something odd with the
packaging system. I would never tell anyone that PackageKit is a
replacement for apt-get, it's just a bit of glue that lets some users do
some cool things.

PackageKit doesn't have to do everything for all users to be successful.

Richard.