[packagekit] portage backends filters

[Mounir Lamouri]

Hi,

As most features of portage backend are now working, I want to go deeper
in special case management. So, I'm in the way to choose the filters the
backend will support.

Here is a list of filters the backend will not support:
- development: -devel and -foo packages do not exist in Gentoo.
- basename: same reasons
- gui: it will be very approximative to say "this is a gui application".
Maybe, further with a tag management.
- application: same reasons

Here is a list of filters the backend will/can surely support:
- installed: trivial
- free: not too hard to now if a package is free
- newest: will be harder for slots but can be done

And the interesting part it's the packages I'm not really sure about:
- arch: according to filters doc [1], it's for multilib support (x86-64
using x86) but it's not managed like that in Gentoo. So we can use it to
"unmask" not keyworded files or use unstable packages. But as it's not
really done for that.
- visible: not really clear what it should be. I was thinking it could
be used to unmask some packages.
-> For these two ones, two things are difficult to get. I don't know if
the way Gentoo can use them is really the way it should be used. I'm not
sure using unstable packages or unmask packages in the gui is really
good for user "security". Packagekit is probably not for people who want
to use last unstable-in-development-highly-risky-but-so-powerfull app.
- supported: i didn't get what it was for.
- source: Gentoo is mostly source based. There are some binary packages
that can be installed. Some, like if it was sources (like
mozilla-firefox-bin which is actually like mozilla-firefox but binary
based). Others like rpm files.
-> I'm not sure letting user to disable 99% of the packages (by setting
not sources) is a good idea. In addition, binary packages is confusing
in Gentoo as rpm-like files is easy to distinguish but binary based
ebuilds aren't.
- collections: they are some in Gentoo but they are somewhat done to be
"transparent" so it's going to be difficult to manage them. I don't see
a real need to have such filter. By the way, it's not in [1].

Finally, I don't see any special filter for Gentoo / portage which is a
good thing ;)

For packagekit-list member, I'm sorry this message is pretty
portage-oriented. It's much more for your information and to have some
clarifications about some filters and have some opition. Especially Zac one.

[1] http://packagekit.org/gtk-doc/introduction-ideas-filters.html

Thanks,
Mounir