[packagekit] Packagekit and Ubuntu

[Richard Hughes]

2009/9/15 Jean Hubbard <jean_p57 at hotmail.com>:
> I recently submitted a bug report requesting that Ubuntu Software
> Store(AppCenter) use/be based on Packagekit instead of gnome-app-install.
> Pretty much replace packagekit-gnome with this AppCenter thing i guess.

Well, Ubuntu are free to do whatever they like. It's disappointing,
but it's getting to be a re-occurring story I'm afraid.

> " Thanks for your bugreport.
> We would love to use packagekit, but it does not support debconf or conffile
> prompting. We attempted to contribute those missing features and
> unfortunately they were not accepted on the ground that a packagekit
> transaction can not be interrupted (for something like debconf or conffile
> handling). This is a important feature for us and without it, e.g. sun-java
> packages do not install."

This isn't true at all. Transactions can be stopped and re-started
with different options (see
http://www.packagekit.org/gtk-doc/introduction-ideas-transactions.html#introduction-ideas-transactions-sig-install
for how all this works) and questions can be put to the user. We
already do that for EULAs, GPG keys and extended authentication
prompts. I'm just not letting a random script ask the user random
non-localised questions. I am happy to add any number of questions, as
long as they are abstracted out in a nice way that other distributions
can use.

> So what i would like to know is, if this may may be possible in a future
> release of PK or what?

Sure, it just needs someone from Ubuntu to contribute the code. I
guess it's harder contributing to a shared project than just writing
_yet_another_ frontend to apt, but I guess that's the Ubuntu way. I
don't want to seem like I'm bashing Ubuntu, as I think it's a great
product, just the transparency and upstream ethos still needs quite a
lot of work. In a few years time I think they will realize that trying
to be the one upstream source for all of the Linux desktop is
impossible, and then hopefully will start working with other
distributions in public. For what it's worth, Sebastian Heinlein has
been doing a great job supporting the apt backend for PackageKit, but
the reception PackageKit is getting in Ubuntu (especially the
integration points) is distinctly lukewarm.

We need someone interested in this to actually write some code, rather
than just decide it's "too hard" and run away and write more code that
will be obsolete (in my opinion) in a few years anyway. If anyone
actually wants to implement this, I've written quite a lot about it on
the mailing lists, or I would happy to discuss things in person, on a
conf call, or even in IRC.

Thanks,

Richard.