Kapti, an experimentation on package installation/removal UI

[Aurélien Gâteau]

On 02/06/2010 02:53, Tres Finocchiaro wrote:
> Aurelien, I visited your page and wanted to offer some questions/feedback:
> 
>    - If you have a back and forward button, why not simply use a web
>    browser?
>    - What does this application do that
> apt-url<http://www.apturl.net/index.php/package/search/?q=firefox&commit=Go&version=Intrepid>doesn't
> already do?

Kapti behaves like a web browser, but it is not a web browser: it does
not present web pages. Right now what you see is an html version of the
output of apt-cache search and apt-cache show. This means the
differences with apt-url are:
- Works mostly offline (except for fetching deb files of course)
- Works with the package sources configured on your system. This
includes PPA.
- Additionally, from what I understand of apt-url, kapti can show more
information about a package, like the dependencies and the
suggest/recommend list.

>    - I frequently use the 10.04 Ubuntu package manager and find it very
>    useful 90% of the time (the interface is notoriously clunky, but it's icons,
>    thumbnails, descriptions, visual feedback are pretty solid).  Is there an
>    initiative to leverage similar behavior?

I have been talking with KPackageKit maintainer, there's nothing
concrete right now, but I would like to see this experiment or the
output we gather from it go into KPackageKit at some point.

>    - When will a package manager start "graying-out" debug tools and library
>    dependencies so people like my mother aren't bombarded with "amarok-dbg",
>    "kamefu-data" when she just wants "amarok"?

Good point.

> I like the idea and I'd like to see more, but at the end of the day I only
> need one package manager, and in kde, it's konsole.

Heh, I personally use kapti from the konsole: whenever I miss a library
while building I can do "kapti libfoo" and click on the libfoo-1.2-4-dev
"Install" link.

Aurélien