AppStream, Discover and metadata

[Scott Kitterman]

On Monday, November 23, 2015 11:24:02 AM Scott Kitterman wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 17, 2015 07:42:26 PM Aleix Pol wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 1:22 AM, Aleix Pol <aleixpol at kde.org> wrote:
> > > On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 8:24 PM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com>
> 
> wrote:
> > >> On Wednesday, November 11, 2015 07:08:39 PM Matthias Klumpp wrote:
> > >>> 2015-11-11 7:09 GMT+01:00 Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com>:
> > >>> > [...]
> > >>> > My personal experience with PackageKit + Apper was very poor.  It
> > >>> > was
> > >>> > my
> > >>> > experience that PackageKit's apt integration was just a thin graft
> > >>> > on
> > >>> > top
> > >>> > of (or under depending on your perspective) something designed to
> > >>> > work
> > >>> > with RPM and really didn't work at all well in Kubuntu.
> > >>> 
> > >>> When did you try that last? Since on Debian we never had such issues,
> > >>> since the switch to the aptcc backend, which performs much better than
> > >>> the old Python-based apt backend.
> > >>> PK itself is in no way RPM specific, in fact it even has
> > >>> Debian-specific facilities built in (e.g. for Debconf support).
> > >>> It is, however, relatively basic and does not support some advanced
> > >>> features (like setting packages on hold) - but that's something one
> > >>> doesn't do in a software center anyway.
> > >> 
> > >> It was several years ago (probably 3 - 5, but I don't recall).  I don't
> > >> have any more recent experience, so I'm sure it could have changed.
> > >> 
> > >>> > I don't know if it was because
> > >>> > of the Apper design or inherent in PackageKit, but it had it's own
> > >>> > package
> > >>> > cache that seemed to be frequently out of sync with apt (note:
> > >>> > aptitude
> > >>> > does/did something similar and associated problems have caused me to
> > >>> > stay
> > >>> > far away from it as well).
> > >>> 
> > >>> Where did you get that idea from? PK, apt and aptcc never had their
> > >>> own package cache, and always accessed the apt cache directly. There
> > >>> is/was a cache for .desktop-file-->package associations, but that one
> > >>> was only used to display a "launch application" dialog after
> > >>> installing (and it didn't matter much if that cache was out of sync).
> > >> 
> > >> Back when I tried it, I regularly saw cases where there were updates
> > >> that
> > >> apt was aware of that apper was not.  Also, I recall that the only way
> > >> to determine if additional packages would need to be installed along
> > >> with a package upgrade was to do a dry run upgrade internally and then
> > >> if it failed, additional packages were needed.
> > >> 
> > >> As mentioned above, this was a long time ago and I have not kept up to
> > >> see if things have changed.
> > >> 
> > >>> > In my limited free time I've been working on making QApt + Muon work
> > >>> > better in Debian and if there's a newer thing in that direction to
> > >>> > test,
> > >>> > I'd be glad to test it on Debian.
> > >>> 
> > >>> Please do, but please also use a recent version of PK and QPK - the
> > >>> version in Ubuntu has been outdated for years, which will be fixed
> > >>> this cycle as I was told.
> > >> 
> > >> I'm using whatever is in Debian.
> > >> 
> > >> Scott K
> > >> 
> > >> --
> > >> kubuntu-devel mailing list
> > >> kubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> > >> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
> > >> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-devel>
> > > 
> > > IMHO Apper usage is completely unrelated to this transition. In fact,
> > > I doubt that Apper is up to speed yet. The port to Qt5 is very recent
> > > and it will lack features that an apt-centered alternative can offer
> > > (such as Muon or Synaptic).
> > > 
> > > Aleix
> > 
> > Since this has been quite silent for the last days, I decided to move
> > on and port the QApt backend to AppStream.
> > It's in a qapt+appstream branch:
> > http://commits.kde.org/discover/534290759ae964cd7b47d325019f08a5b507e29e
> > 
> > Problem: AppStream database in willy is broken and lacks quite some
> > information (and so does willy+1, but to a lesser extent). This means
> > that if I merge this patch in master (which I want to do), Plasma/5.5
> > Discover on Kubuntu Willy won't work.
> > 
> > Could somebody please look into updating/fixing the AppStream in willy?
> > For reference: using this ppa solves all of the problems:
> > add-apt-repository ppa:ximion/packagekit
> 
> For Debian, I'd appreciate it if you would pick up this discussion on
> debian- qt-kde at lists.debian.org so we can do what needs to be done to get
> qapt + appstream working there.  I'll be glad to work on that.
> 
> Scott K

Oops, I meant pkg-kde-talk at l.d.o.

Scott K