[packagekit] What is PackageKit? A general package management suite? - Take 2
Filipus Klutiero
chealer at gmail.com
Fri Mar 5 08:43:25 PST 2010
Hi,
I never used PackageKit. I develop Debian and there is no good package
management GUI. There was discussion about what to do to get a good package
manager for Qt/KDE. Working on KPackageKit was discussed as a possible
replacement for Adept, Synaptic and others.
But what needs to be clear before that is the intentions of PackageKit. Does
PackageKit intend to be a general-purpose or universal layer above libapt's
layer?
http://packagekit.org/pk-intro.html contains
> Use cases for PackageKit exist for the following scenarios:
>
> * Boot time security updates
> * Installing files automatically, e.g. openoffice-clipart
> * Installing new features, e.g. smart-card readers
> * Allowing unprivileged users to install software in a corporate build
> * Opening unknown file formats
> * Removing dependencies for files
Should I understand that PackageKit wants to address a limited number of use
cases? PackageKit seems more focused on creating simple GUI-s than powerful
GUI-s. Is this just an impression? Basically, could PackageKit be able to
downgrade packages, put packages on hold, manage mixed systems and everything,
or should PackageKit complement more powerful but distribution-specific package
management front-ends?
There are of course limitations coming from PackageKit being in development.
I'm not asking about the current features, but about where you want to go.
More information about the PackageKit
mailing list