[packagekit] PackageKit support for Fedora modularity?

[Martin Pitt]

Hello Richard,

Richard Hughes [2017-08-03 10:59 +0100]:
> Do you know where the metadata will be that defines what's in each module?

Right now it's in those places:

 - /etc/dnf/modules.d/*.module tracks which modules are installed
 - /var/lib/yumdb/ has metadata about the installed modules, similar to
   installed packages.

However, I believe PK shouldn't actually know about this - libdnf should.

> > PK would most likely need to grow
> > a more thorough understanding of what a module is.
> 
> Can't we just pass this down to the lower levels? I'm not against
> adding API, but I'd really like to re-use as much stuff as we can. At
> the moment PK only understands:
> 
> * sources
> * packages
> * groups (i.e. a flat group)
> * categories (i.e. a hierarchical tree)

It also understands "repository", at least as a simple string. That might
actually be the closest fit, except that "modules" are currently a weirdly
(under-)defined middle-ground between repositories and packages. I wish the
definition would be clearer and it would IMHO make more sense to conceptually
treat them like repositories instead of some kind of super-package; the latter
collides with the ability of installing/upgrading individual packages in it,
and also with the concept of putting all non-modularized packages into an
"other" module.

So my conclusions so far:

 * This apparently hasn't been discussed with the PackageKit community yet, and
   there's no one obvious who is already working on this.

 * The concept of modules needs to be clarified; I'll discuss that further with
   the developers.

 * Until then it's not clear how to represent these in PackageKit (nor Cockpit
   for that matter).

Thanks!

Martin