Fwd: New project idea - kde package manager for Mobile

[Laszlo Papp]

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 4:41 PM, Aleix Pol <aleixpol at kde.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Laszlo Papp <djszapi at archlinux.us> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Let me answer the remarks sequantially:
>>
>> @Daniel
>> > I think that is not a good idea not to use PackageKit since it is part
>> > of Meego Architeture [1]. So if you don't use it you won't have any
>> > guarantee that your software will work on any Meego compliant OS.
>>
>> It is not true since the rpmlib would be the backend and that should
>> work in any case.
>> That is also the part of the Meego architecture and on the other hand
>> I do not know how long Nokia will keep this not Qt frontend.
>> There have been a Qt frontend development for Maemo, but not that I
>> know about Meego. Essentially I would like to start very similar that
>> Nokia started for Maemo.
>
> I think that the important part is to support the repositories more than
> RPM. That's where I see that supporting packagekit would be much more of a
> benefit. Also this wouldn't tie you into RPM or Meego in any way.
> RPM integration would just be useful to create an application to install
> packages, but that's not very powerful, you want to have the full repository
> information and to be capable of installing all the deps and to list all the
> applications.

Ahh, do not think it is that hard and I have written something similar
in the last weeks.
It is more like simple QtSQL module's query usage, it is really not
that hard. (At least in Qt)
It is a bit trickier with low-level sql interface, but as soon as you
stored these information in a database, it is not a problem anymore.
All these things are solved in that Qt application where I
contributed, so it would be most likely  a copy/paste with some minor
fixes.
That application handles sqlite databases, but it is nearly pointless
if you are using QtSQL module.

On the other hand, shaman +1 than packagekit, if you really liked to
have a pluggable application for that. ;)

>> > KDE already has a PackageKit and its actively developed [2]. I think
>> > you can try to contact the main KPackageKit developer and propose him
>> > to join the development and start to create a better interface for
>> > mobile devices.
>> > [1]
>> > http://meego.com/developers/meego-architecture/data-management#packagekit
>> > [2] http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/KPackageKit?content=84745
>>
>> PackageKit is not that was I think it is good. It depends on too much
>> libraries unneccesarily and if you liked to have a pure Qt (or KDE)
>> frontend I do not think it needs to
>> depend on those libraries. The main point is that I would not like to
>> have a pluggable package manager, just really a very easy one for fun
>> :=)
>
> It doesn't really make sense to discard PackageKit just because it needs
> plugins, the devices we run on should be able to support plugins (come on,
> they're trying to run kontact on that, it has to be powerful).

If you read back you will find it is not the only reason. It depends
on more libraries than neccesary.
(http://www.packagekit.org/pk-authors.html -> there are a lot of gnome
keywords here, ++Shaman again:>). I think that does not matter how
powerful a device is.
At least I try to do my best in code optimization, scaling and so on
in every case, independently from the processor or the device
capability.

But finally I agree with Martin, yeah this market might provide
another mobile phones where kde-mobile will be a potential project, at
least I hope so :=) It means I will look into pluggable applications
later (probably shaman) and I might be trying to help there. The final
consequence is that on my side, it is better to improve than the
current pluggable applications and scale them for mobile usage.

Thank you for the discussion and all your feedback and remarks! :)

Best Regards,
Laszlo Papp