[packagekit] Res: One click install support in PackageKit

[Thibauld Favre]

2009/4/1 Debayan Banerjee <debayanin at gmail.com>:
> The best way you can do that is by accepting to be my mentor! I have
> submitted my proposal to "Fedora Project & JBoss.org (Red Hat)".
> Perhaps you would be interested in it.

I'd be glad to be your mentor for this project if everybody here
agrees (Richard ?). Concerning your proposal, in the scope of this
project, I would focus on  1) and 2). I'm a bit skeptical about 3) and
4). They are interesting ideas but I'm not sure it makes sense to go
beyond the pluggable policy feature.

I've looked into Dorian Perkins code and gave it a try, it is a great
start but still very early stage. In my opinion, we'd better begin
coding things in python (leveraging python-packagekit bindings) and
inspire from apturl ( https://launchpad.net/apturl/ ) for a first
shot. Basically, I would propose the following rough planning for
<doyouhaveanameyet?> :

1. Replacing the "apt" backend used by "apturl" by a packagekit backend.
=> objective: being able to use "pkurl" (?) as a simple protocol
handler in firefox to perform 1 click installation from firefox (by
using links like href="pk:<package1>,<package2>")

2. Adding oci file format support to "pkurl".
=> objective: being able to register a new mime type in the system to
have pkurl used to perform 1 click installation from any webbrowser
for links like href="http://mydomain.com/file.oci"

3. In order to smooth the end user experience as much as possible, I
think the following features are needed if the package is a "desktop
application" (=contains one or more .desktop file) :
    a) proposing the user to launch the application immediatly if the
package got successfully installed
    b) letting the user know where he can find and launch the
application later (ex: Applications > Accessories)
=> objective: a user clicks on a 1 click installation link for a
desktop application. He gets prompted "Do you want to install
<package1> ?" [yes]. The installation process goes on. It finishes and
then pkurl notifies the user : "installation successfully completed.
Application can be found here : X > Y. Do you want to run it now?".

4. "pkurl" should be able to handle nicely multiple packages
installations. So far, if you ask for multiple package installation
with apturl (href="apt:package1,package2,package3"). It treats the 3
packages in sequence so it is basically not a 1 click install anymore
as the user has to wait for the 1st package to finish installing
before agreeing for the installation of the 2nd package and so on...
We should adapt pkurl UI and workflow to handle nicely multiple
packages installations.
=> objective: a user clicks on a 1 click installation link for several
desktop apps. He gets prompted with the list of applications he asks
to install and can accept / cancel the installation [he accepts]. [the
installation processes begins] he can see the progression status for
each package. [the installation process ends] for each package, he can
see where it is located in the menu and has a "launch now" button for
immediate execution.

5. Specify and implement the pluggable 3rd party repository policy
mechanism as Benjamin briefly described.

I think this would be just great! What do you think?

Thibauld