[packagekit] ALPM Backend

[Richard Hughes]

On Tue, 2008-09-02 at 11:40 +0200, Georg Grabler wrote:
> I'm just aware of one type of data to be set in ALPM. I'm currently in
> talks with the ALPM / Pacman devs to find out if more is required.
> 
> ALPM at least needs:
> 1.) Which repositories to sync (core, extra, community, unstable,
> testing etc). I couldn't find a similar configuration option in
> PackageKit.

RefreshCache should refresh all of them. It's uninteresting to the users
what is being synced, but it's important to them to know everything is
up to date. If you look at http://www.packagekit.org/pk-profiles.html
then I don't think any of them care what repo is being synced.

> 2.) The Mirror URL for the specific repository (probably possible with
> RepoSetData).
> 
> Can SetRepoData be used for somethin like:
> RepoSetData ("core", "set-download-url", "http://ftp.gigabit.nu/core/os/i686/");

Yes, that's exactly the type of backend specific thing I think
SetRepoData should be used for.

> So basically, I need a way to supply the database name, as well as the
> database mirror url (you probably name it download-url) from
> PackageKit to the ALPM backend.

Don't you cache the url like a yum .repo file does?

> I don't think ALPM has ever been used in this way. The pacman devs
> will be able to answer this (hopefully).

Right. I think it's useful to keep the distinction that real power users
are just going to jump to the shell and use pacman/rpm/apt-get directly;
they don't care for any of this GUI nonsense. The sort of user who does
need a little bit of hand holding, and requires a GUI, doesn't care
about 99% of all the power user options.

I think it's important to remember who you are designing a specific tool
for.

Richard.