[packagekit] Cross-distro package mapping and matching?

[Sebastian Pipping]

Jan Niklas Hasse wrote:
> What about using catalogs? http://www.packagekit.org/pk-faq.html#catalogs
> You could create a catalog for git and then add the different package
> names in there.

That could actually.  It would require modification though as
"use flags" do not seem covered at the moment.
For exaple in a catalog file for

  cpe:/a:sysd:geolizer

we would need a line like

  InstallPackages(gentoo)=app-admin/webalizer[geoip]

in the catalog file.

If a package provides 0 to n programs and a program can be provided
by 0 to m packages (with several packages complementing and/or
competing to each other) catalog files might work even in complex
situations.  Apart from the "abuse" of the format, the text overhead
and the requirement for a small extension using catalogs could be a
real approach to this.

With that said, what do you think?



Sebastian