RFC: On-demand package installation API in kdelibs

[dantti85-dev at yahoo.com.br]

> De: Lubos Lunak <l.lunak at suse.cz>
> Para: kde-core-devel at kde.org
> Enviadas: Quinta-feira, 29 de Julho de 2010 12:56:50
> Assunto: Re: RFC: On-demand package installation API in kdelibs
> 
> On Thursday 29 of July 2010, dantti85-dev at yahoo.com.br wrote:
> > Weird nobody said a word about what I posted...
> > so what  about just using PackageKit interface?
> 
>  Because maybe it should be you  saying something about it :) ?
:( nobody likes me :P


> > If your app is in gnome it will use  the gnome packagekit
> > http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/playground/sysadmin/kpackagekit/SmartIcon/org.f
> >reedesktop.PackageKit.xml?revision=1055286&view=markup
> 
>   Could you elaborate a bit more on suitability for the task? The only real 
> experience with PackageKit I have is by using KUpdateApplet, the openSUSE 
> tool for checking and installing updates, and it can be summed up as, to put 
> it bluntly, 'PackageKit sucks'. KUpdateApplet hasn't seen any development 
> besides maintenance for several last openSUSE releases, yet there are 
> regressions every single release (otherwise KUpdateApplet probably wouldn't 
> even need the maintenance). IIRC the KUpdateApplet maintainer mentioned that 
> PackageKit changes more often than the things it abstracts, which is  pathetic 

> for an abstraction layer and IMO a showstopper for KDE usage. It  also seemed 
> pretty over-engineered when I had to help with an urgent  KUpdateApplet bugfix 

> once. Finally, how widely available is it  actually?

Well KUpdateApplet is a distro specif tool for SUSE that uses PackageKit,
the interface on the link I posted is the session interface.
So all your application has to do is call it using DBus,
but who is going to answer your DBus question or prompt the user
to install something is KPackageKit or Gnome-PackageKit or whoever
provides that interface.

KPackageKit besides some bugs of crashes is widely adopted,
Fedora, Ubuntu and many others use it by default. PackageKit
API does change since it's a 'new' project and some backends
demand changes (I myself are responsible for many breaks because
of aptcc). I think KUpdateApplet have a busy maintainer because the
fixes are fast, since most breaks are really simple. I also never
received an email of him complaining about packagekit-qt.


> > Additionally to this interface you can create  catalog
> > files which when you issue KPackageKit it
> > parses it and  reads the packages that are suited to
> > your distro.
> >
> > I  think instead of creating new API I could write
> > some kde developer pages  explaining how to use it.
> 
>  The point of this API is to provide simple  means for checking and installing 

> components if necessary, and D-Bus  interface is not that. One of the 
> implementations of the API could use it  though.
D-Bus is not that, but the services that are provide through it are.
http://packagekit.org/pk-faq.html#session-methods
In the above link you will how easy for an application to know
if X component is installed and even ask for install.