[packagekit] Installing PackageKit catalogs

[David D Lowe]

Hello all!

I'm interested in using PackageKit catalogs for a particular application 
of mine. As far as I can tell, it's not quite there yet.

Currently, when trying to install a catalog which lists already 
installed packages, it fails loudly:

First dialog:
No packages need to be installed

Second dialog:
The action could not be completed
The request failed. More details are available in the detailed report.
More details:
   No packages need to be installed

I'm using gnome-packagekit 2.29 on Ubuntu, I'm sorry to bother you if 
the issue has been fixed since.

Here's what I would need to be able to use catalogs:
- a way to discover if the packages listed in a catalog file are already 
installed, through DBus or through pkcon.
- a way to install catalogs without installing gnome-packagekit, through 
pkcon.

The documentation in org.freedesktop.PackageKit.xml says that the method 
InstallCatalogs takes these flags: 
show-confirm-search,show-confirm-deps,show-confirm-install,show-progress,show-finished,show-warning

I would interested in what each flag is supposed to do. I tried 
show-confirm-search, and it displayed several dialogs at once, only one 
responding to user input. Is that what it is supposed to do?

If you're interested in my application, I'm designing a container format 
for themes. I want to find a cross-distro way to express a dependency 
that a particular theme may have. For example: GTK themes often depend 
on a GTK engine that's not installed by default. Instead of finding a 
way to specify different package names for different distros, I thought 
I'd re-use PackageKit catalogs.

Thanks for your time!
David D Lowe