[packagekit] PackageKit and source packages?

[Richard Hughes]

On 21 May 2011 03:38, Benjamin M. Schwartz <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Noob here.

Welcome!

> What's the state of PackageKit and source code/source
> packages?  For example, is there any way to say "PackageKit, please tell
> me the source package associated with [this binary package]."?

No, but it's been asked for before. The issue is really how we define
what a "source package" is. For some distros it's an upstream tarball
location and a recipe, and some distros it's just a package NEVRA in a
remote source.

> I come from OLPC/Sugar land, where we dream big about user-modifiable
> software, so I'd love to let users _edit_ that code, test it, and publish
> patches ... but for the moment I'd be very happy if they could read it.
> If PackageKit could give me the SRPM, or the tarball URL, or the git
> address, that would probably be enough to get started.

Well, I think it makes a lot of sense to add. It's quite easy to add
methods to PackageKit, but it's a lot harder to convince the backend
maintainers to add support :-)

>From my point of view, it would be handy to say:

GetSource($package_ids)

and then get back:

Package(info, package_id, summary)
Package(info, package_id, summary)

>From the package_id we can get the name, version, arch and repo. Would
a single package_id be enough to encode all the source details for
backends like apt, conary and gentoo? Ideas welcome.

Richard.