Project: libmuon package install for 3rd party applications

[Matthias Klumpp]

2015-03-13 14:32 GMT+01:00 Jonathan Riddell <jr at jriddell.org>:
> [...]
>> PS: A good GSoC would be to make sure that Appstream can finally be
>> adopted properly in Kubuntu
>
> While this would be lovely it would probably require a lot of
> coordination in debian, launchpad and ubuntu. It feels like a full
> time job :(

Well... I had a GSoC student last year who implemented some of tbe
parts necessary for this feature, and I just submitted a patch to
Debian's dak which will make AppStream work on Debian immediately.
Some coordination and development work is still necessary, but all the
hard parts are done.
I also wrote a Python module which makes it easier to integrate
AppStream into any Debian repository service (I am thinking about
reprepro and Launchpad here).
The Tanglu Linux distribution[1] already uses a lot of this new code
(minus the dak generator bits)
Having AppStream working well is one of my personal release goals for
Debian 9 (Stretch), so it's safe to say that we'll have it soon.
If you know anyone at Ubuntu who wants to talk about AppStream
integration, just point them at me - I'd be glad to help (although my
primary priority is Debian at time).

> Maybe it's just for full package managers that it's an issue and it
> would work fine for this use case.  The packagekit in Ubuntu is being
> held back but chatting today with ubuntu people it could be updated to
> packagekit 0.9 which is what kicker needs and I guess other places
> where this would be useful.

Yeah, annoyingly the support for plugins was removed in PK 1.0. We had
a chat about that upstream, especially since my 3rd-party
app-installer "Listaller" depended on this feature for system
integration[2]. But the PK maintainer really wanted to get rid of that
feature for stability reasons. Unfortunately, Ubuntu's "Click"
installer uses the old Listaller code to hook into PackageKit as a
plugin, that's why Ubuntu can't live without it.
When Jessie was pre-freeze I had the nice option of including 1.0 and
breaking Listaller and other stuff, or not including it and having to
maintain 0.9 (1.0 has the much nicer codebase).
In general, there are issues at Ubuntu, but I believe all of that can
be solved relatively easily. In any case, it's safe to use
libpackagekit-glib2 and libpackagekit-qt there :)

Cheers,
    Matthias



[1]: http://tanglu.org/download/ - we also build snapshots with
Plasma5, full AppStream support is only visible in the GNOME flavor at
time
[2]: This removal, together with a few other reasons, lead to me
rewriting Listaller as "Limba", which now needs integration into
software installer clients like GNOME-Software and Muon, instead of
using PackageKit. GNOME meanwhile started some serious work on XdgApp,
so GNOME-Software has the necessary interfaces to support 3rd-party
app-installers. Having support for these projects in KDE/Muon would be
a useful future goal.