[packagekit] Zif 0.1.4 released!

[James Antill]

On Fri, 2011-02-04 at 16:15 +0000, Richard Hughes wrote:
> On 10 January 2011 07:46, Rahul Sundaram <metherid at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 7:34 PM, Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Zif is a simple yum-compatible library that only provides read-write
> >> access to the rpm database and the Fedora metadata for PackageKit.
> >>
> > I am not sure what's the relationship between yum and zif and it seems a bit
> > confusing.  Can you clarify the goals and what the roadmap looks like?  It
> > is eventually intended to replace yum,  a small subset of it or what?
> 
> I dunno.

 Given you are spending a significant amount of your time on zif, and
are basically the only committer to it ... who else would know the
roadmap?

 From the yum side, zif is a completely different package manager just
like smart or zypper. It can (modulo bugs) access Fedora repos. just
like smart or apt-rpm (zypper can, AIUI, but isn't in Fedora atm.).
 It has a different API, different cmdline-UI/bugs/etc. So there is no
more of a relationship between yum and zif, than with yum and smart.

>  It was designed for the sole use of PackageKit to make some
> stuff that took a long time in yum a lot faster.

 If you have performance queries/RFE's/etc. for yum, by all means open a
bug about them or talk to one of the developers.
 From my analysis yum is currently the fastest package manager for
Fedora (even ignoring the fact it often does more).

 I will also re-iterate what I've told you privately, if anybody wants
to use smart, apt-rpm, zypper, zif, whatever to manage Fedora instead of
yum ... they are welcome to their opinion/preference/whatever.

 However if someone wants to pick 2 or more package managers, and have
them fight over managing their system ... I would suggest they look at
what problem they are trying to solve, then pick one and solve it.
 Certainly the yum developers priorities are not aligned with fighting
for control of the system, against one or more other package
managers ... and the response to bugs/RFE's etc. to "help" those
usecases will reflect that.
 I would also expect the smart/zypper/etc. developers to prioritize in
the same way.

>  Whether it's useful
> outside of PackageKit I'm not sure. The yum team are announcing some
> big changes soon, so hopefully you (and I!) will be a bit better
> informed.

 Neither I nor Seth know what you mean by "big changes", there is a
tentative roadmap of features to be implemented over the next year or so
(as is usual) and one of those is an API to access yum directly from C.
I wouldn't call that a big change though, and it's much less obvious if
that will affect PK at all.
 How any of the things on the roadmap would relate to zypper, smart or
zif ... I have no idea.