[packagekit] Extending the RepoDetail signal

[Jonathan Conder]

  On 07/10/10 20:51, Richard Hughes wrote:
> On 7 October 2010 05:35, Jonathan Conder<jonno.conder+fdo at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> I've just thought of this now, so it's not a big priority or anything, but
>> it might be nice to have support for package recommendations/optional
>> dependencies.
> Could you define any formal use cases for this? For instance "Graham
> just installed OpenOffice writer. He might also want to install
> OpenOffice spreadsheet".
That's close, but not quite what optional dependencies mean (on Arch at 
least). The first thing that springs to mind is someone installing wine 
on a 64-bit system. I often see people on the Arch forums who forget to 
install 32-bit packages for nvidia-utils/catalyst-utils, which can't be 
made dependencies as not everyone has an NVIDIA/ATI card, but are 
essential for running most windows games. Maybe this could apply to 
Bevan from packagekit.org - "Bevan has just installed wine on his NVIDIA 
machine, but does not know that he will need 32-bit nvidia-utils." On 
Arch at least, each optional dependency is accompanied by a specific 
summary, for example "Required to play games on NVIDIA hardware."
For the others, perhaps this would be more fitting: "Suzan/Graham has 
just installed GNOME Movie Player (i.e. totem). (S)he might want to 
install support for MP3 playback." Obviously this is handled by 
PackageKit already, but I suspect they would prefer to install 
everything at once than encounter an unexpected wait for additional 
codecs to download.

Jonathan