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List:       opensuse-packaging
Subject:    Re: [opensuse-packaging] Consolidate yast sw_single and online_update?
From:       Pascal Bleser <pascal.bleser () skynet ! be>
Date:       2005-10-13 6:39:57
Message-ID: 434E013D.5010303 () skynet ! be
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Adrian Schroeter wrote:
> On Monday 03 October 2005 11:48, Pascal Bleser wrote:
>> James Ogley wrote:
...
>> Actually I would propose to re-think the current concept of YaST2's
>> Software Management module. To me, it should be an aggregator of package
>> information from various sources: - SUSE repositories
>> - supplemental, if checked
>> - 3rd party repositories, if checked
>> - Online Update (or not, if it is obsoleted by YaST2 Software Management)

Hi Adrian ;)
Great to have you on this list.

> jfyi, we do think about such a tool, but it will not happen within the next 6 
> month from the SUSE side.

Ok. Yes, I can imagine the YaST2 developers are a bit reluctant to change the Software Manager
component ;)

> Maybe we could create some temporary solution, simply using a small 
> application around the http://kstuff.org/ mechanism. A client would be 
> provided already via the kdelibs, we only need to figure out how to setup 
> such a server (but I have some contacts how can answer this ;)

Basically, a <knewstuff/> feed at every packager's site. At the very least we can do that at Packman
and my site (or, well, the merged one).
<knewstuff/> items can then get piped into to "yast2 -i".

But there are two issues:
1) dependencies: if yast2 hasn't been properly set up in terms of 3rd party package repositories,
the "yast2 -i" is likely to fail on missing dependencies (*)
2) aggregation: maybe I should get into more detail about knewstuff but I suppose that having a
single, aggregated feed of package updates would be much better than having one per repository (**)

(*) well, ok, we loose some user-friendliness there, but we could temporarely work around that with
documentation and installation notes or similar
(**) maybe opensuse.org can play a role here, but we discussed already about legal issues, e.g. a
feed on/from opensuse.org giving a link on lame, mad, win32codecs-all, mplayer, etc.. that's on
Packman (or elsewhere)

- From a technical point of view, I think the <knewstuff/> feed representation format is a big pain,
because RDF and Atom perfectly fit their needs but hey... ;)

>> I'd also suggest to define some metadata format to "mechanize" that
>> information, and all the 3rd party packagers would have to provide such
>> metadata to be integrated into the "YaST2 Software Central" (or whatever).
>> XML seems well-suited for that purpose (also because it can be directly
>> transformed to, say, HTML).
>> That metadata could include things like:
>> - package name, package version, release (obviously)
>> - release scope: new features, bugfix, security fix
>> - version state: beta, stable
>> - changelog information
>> - description
>> - link to project website
>> - screenshot(s)

Some of that is included in the <knewstuff/> format:
http://www.kstuff.org/docs/tutorial/
(see the "Server side: File formats" section)

...

>> Obviously, and that's probably the reason why this will never happen,
>> implement all of this requires a major YaST2 overhaul, especially as far as
>> the Software Management module is concerned :\
> 
> yes, but this will happen anyway ;)

Great to hear so :)

So, based on knewstuff, a first prototype version seems pretty feasible.
I think the problematic part is the server-side, because the format includes voting, number of
downloads and similar, that has to be actively processed by the server-side, so it's not just a
"read only" thing as it would with RSS/RDF/Atom.
That's an issue indeed, as not everyone (packagers) around here could have such a server-side
application running, to update their database. At least those hosted on gwdg.de can't.
At Packman we could implement that. As we're currently finishing the overhaul of the Packman
website, I could try to implement a prototype (on the server-side).
That could be a first step. Then add the client. Any KDE wiz around here ? ;)

cheers
- --
  -o) Pascal Bleser     http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
  /\\ <pascal.bleser@skynet.be>       <guru@unixtech.be>
 _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane.
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