[Bug 423718] Re: Use Packagekit instead of gnome-app-install.

[Richard Hughes]

> We would love to use packagekit, but it does not support debconf or conffile
> prompting. We attempted to contribute those missing features and
> unfortunately they were not accepted on the ground that a packagekit
> transaction can not be interrupted (for something like debconf or conffile
> handling). This is a important feature for us and without it, e.g. sun-java
> packages do not install."

That isn't true at all. Nobody from Ubuntu tried to contribute the
missing functionality, but quite a few people insisted I wrote code to
connect a VTE widget to the transaction which is very different to what
actually needs to be done.

Transactions can already be stopped and re-started with different
options (see http://www.packagekit.org/gtk-doc/introduction-ideas-
transactions.html#introduction-ideas-transactions-sig-install for how
all this works) and questions can be put to the user. We already do that
for EULAs, GPG keys and extended authentication prompts. We already use
the EULA prompts in SUSE, and GPG prompts in Fedora. I'm just not
letting a random script ask the user random non-localised questions. I
am happy to add any number of abstract questions, as long as they are
written in a nice way that other distributions can use.

> So what i would like to know is, if this may may be possible in a future
> release of PK or what?

Sure, it just needs someone from Ubuntu to contribute the code. I guess
it's harder contributing to a shared project than just writing
_yet_another_ frontend to apt, but I guess that's the Ubuntu way. I
don't want to seem like I'm bashing Ubuntu, as I think it's a great
product, just the transparency and upstream ethos still needs quite a
lot of work. In a few years time I hope you guys will realize that
trying to be the one upstream source for all of the Linux desktop is
impossible, and then hopefully will start working with other
distributions in public. For what it's worth, Sebastian Heinlein has
been doing a great job supporting the apt backend for PackageKit, but
the reception PackageKit is getting in Ubuntu (especially for the
integration points) is distinctly lukewarm.

We need someone interested in this to actually write some code, rather
than just decide it's "too hard" and run away and write more code that
will be obsolete (in my opinion) in a few years anyway. If anyone
actually wants to implement this, I've written quite a lot about it on
the mailing lists, or I would happy to discuss things in person, on a
conf call, or even on IRC.

Thanks,

Richard.

-- 
Use Packagekit instead of gnome-app-install.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/423718
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.

-- 
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
ubuntu-bugs at lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs