On Tuesday, November 02, 2010 01:20:40 pm J. Daniel Schmidt wrote: [...]

There are also openSUSE versions for Netbooks and Meego devices aso. It would be great if this "Store-like-thingy" (no idea yet how to call it) would run on each of these with the same look and feel.

Why not to improve http://software.opensuse.org/search in a way that it is really user friendly? Let users rate the applications, add screenshots and descriptions. We'd just need to integrate it into the desktop, because there are a lot of openSUSE web pages almost nobody knows about. Having an easily findable link to the software search is essential. Cheers Thomas -- Thomas Goettlicher SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

2010/11/2 Duncan Mac-Vicar P. :

...

Following up with the discussions that took place in the openSUSE conference, I would like to kick off a discussion that has as an objective to come up with a step-by-step plan on how to

- Make it ridiculously easy for the users to find & install the ridiculously good software

This has various possible technical solutions. But the output has to be:

- a "place" where the user can click and see the available cool software (ie: Chromium" not ie: libhenne-devel) with screenshots, ratings, comments

- The user should not care about repositories and their combination requisites, or strange signature dialogs

- Other pieces in the distro need to be integrated, or at least it would be nice to, for example we ship KPackageKit which is a lovely app if you show a bunch of apps separated by groups, but gets completely unusable if you show 2135 packages with strange names in one category in a simple list-view. Other pieces don't, like zypper, YaST2 which are mean to be used as package managers.

- Whatever new opportunities we are able to get done in the process. For example, Frank's project bretzel has components that fit int he backoffice, aiming for a one click publishing of software from the developer's side (using adrian's _service's) which fits ridiculously great in our build service story.

Isn't that the idea behind http://software.opensuse-community.org/? What's the status? Cool! Didn't know that something like this exists! That's exactly what I

On Tuesday, November 02, 2010 01:31:22 pm Cristian Morales Vega wrote: proposed in my last post. Cheers Thomas -- Thomas Goettlicher SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

Hi, yes. We don´t have an website for this project yet. :-) But I indeed suggest to use the OCS API and one of the existing client for openSUSE. MeeGo will use the same system in the next release and others are also interested. So this could be a nice area of collaboration between different distributions. It´s also good for openSUSE because most of the AppStore system already exists. It shouldn´t be a problem to launch it for 11.4 Open TODOs - Do a meeting with people from other distributions to try to convince everybody to use the same API. This would be good for the complete Linux ecosystem. - Find a name for the openSUSE AppStore client. Something like "AppStore", "SoftwareCenter", SoftwareInstaller, .. - Create an icon for the client. - Take the existing GHNS client and convert it into a standalone Desktop client. (very easy) - Find a domainname for the website (foo.opensuse.org or opensuse-foo.org, ...) - Decision how the applications are maintained. (scanning of a existing repository and extracting metadata or user generated entries with ratings, ...) - Do the backend (Frank) - more I forgot :-) I plan to do a proof of concept in the next few days. We could finalize everything during a 2-3 days developer meeting. What do you think? Cheers Frank On 02.11.2010, at 14:47, Jiri Srain wrote:

There was a keynote at the openSUSE conference on Saturday which was held by Frank Karlitschek. He talked about the Praetzel project, which includes, among other parts, an app-store and has currently ready three clients.

I tried to find the project and fialed - perhaps because I did not get the name correctly, as it is a word in the Bavarian dialect. As it is supported for MeeGo, which uses in genral the same update stack as openSUSE, it could be on option to use it at openSUSE.

Jiri

On Tuesday 02 November 2010 11:19:18 Duncan Mac-Vicar P. wrote:

...

Following up with the discussions that took place in the openSUSE conference, I would like to kick off a discussion that has as an objective to come up with a step-by-step plan on how to

- Make it ridiculously easy for the users to find & install the ridiculously good software

This has various possible technical solutions. But the output has to be:

- a "place" where the user can click and see the available cool software (ie: Chromium" not ie: libhenne-devel) with screenshots, ratings, comments

- The user should not care about repositories and their combination requisites, or strange signature dialogs

- Other pieces in the distro need to be integrated, or at least it would be nice to, for example we ship KPackageKit which is a lovely app if you show a bunch of apps separated by groups, but gets completely unusable if you show 2135 packages with strange names in one category in a simple list-view. Other pieces don't, like zypper, YaST2 which are mean to be used as package managers.

- Whatever new opportunities we are able to get done in the process. For example, Frank's project bretzel has components that fit int he backoffice, aiming for a one click publishing of software from the developer's side (using adrian's _service's) which fits ridiculously great in our build service story.

Cheers

-- Regards,

Jiri Srain YaST Team Leader --------------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX, s.r.o. e-mail: jsrain@suse.cz Lihovarska 1060/12 tel: +420 284 084 659 190 00 Praha 9 fax: +420 284 084 001 Czech Republic http://www.suse.cz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

-- Frank Karlitschek karlitschek@kde.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

On 03.11.2010, at 13:31, Duncan Mac-Vicar P. wrote:

On 11/02/2010 04:24 PM, Frank Karlitschek wrote:

...

Hi,

yes. We don´t have an website for this project yet. :-)

But I indeed suggest to use the OCS API and one of the existing client for openSUSE.

What do you mean with existing client for openSUSE?

Sorry for the bad phrase. I mean I suggest to use libattica for the communication with the server/repository and use the existing KDE GHNS client as native AppStore client for the desktop. It´s of course possible to write a GTK+ bases frontend on top of libattica if the GNOME community don´t like a Qt based AppStore. I already discussed this with Vincent.

...

MeeGo will use the same system in the next release and others are also interested. So this could be a nice area of collaboration between different distributions. It´s also good for openSUSE because most of the AppStore system already exists. It shouldn´t be a problem to launch it for 11.4

Open TODOs

- Do a meeting with people from other distributions to try to convince everybody to use the same API. This would be good for the complete Linux ecosystem.

Makes sense

...

- Find a name for the openSUSE AppStore client. Something like "AppStore", "SoftwareCenter", SoftwareInstaller, ..

...

- Create an icon for the client. - Take the existing GHNS client and convert it into a standalone Desktop client. (very easy)

Get Hot New Stuff? How to hook that up with the app installation?

It´s very easy to transform the existing GHNS app into an AppStore client. We only have to feed in the new application categories and add a openSUSE branding with nice colors, logo, name and so on. The user get´s a link to an ymp file if he/she clikcs on install. We could use the existing system packagekit/yast system to handle the installation of the new application.

...

- Find a domainname for the website (foo.opensuse.org or opensuse-foo.org, ...) - Decision how the applications are maintained. (scanning of a existing repository and extracting metadata or user generated entries with ratings, ...) - Do the backend (Frank) - more I forgot :-)

I plan to do a proof of concept in the next few days.

We could finalize everything during a 2-3 days developer meeting.

-- Duncan Mac-Vicar P. - Novell® Making IT Work As One™ SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg)

-- Frank Karlitschek karlitschek@kde.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

On 03.11.2010, at 14:29, Duncan Mac-Vicar P. wrote:

On 11/02/2010 04:24 PM, Frank Karlitschek wrote:

...

Hi,

yes. We don´t have an website for this project yet. :-)

But I indeed suggest to use the OCS API and one of the existing client for openSUSE.

BTW, as we are also looking into dropping our KUpdaterApplet custom PackageKit client and using the upstream KPackageKit, I was researching how to make those nice clients show applications. I was shocked with all the infrastructure that is already there.

https://github.com/hughsie/app-install/blob/master/docs/app-install-v2.txt

Is the app-install specification of PackageKit, drafted by Richard and Sebastian Heinlein (so two different distros already).

The original idea is to have one package per repo with the application metadata, that ships the data that is added to /var/lib/app-install/desktop.db, however I never liked this solution.

The nice thing is: KPackageKit already show the applications automatically if that database is there.

The thing is: We could have a small tool that queries the OCS API for the openSUSE applications (may be passing some additional HTTP headers like the distro version) and write this database. This could be done as a cron job even. If that does not work we still can try other approaches, like generating app metadata once from the APIs and shipping those in the repositories.

The result is something like: http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2010/09/07/linux-and-application-installing/

Having the client tools supporting this, plus a way to install the app from the web appstore or the GHNS client (what Frank mentioned in the previous email) would give us a great concrete starting point. What do you think?

This sounds interesting. The drawback of a static db approach is that the more interactive features like rating, comments, suggest application to friends, social features and other advanced features do not work. This was the approach we had with the old GHNS where we used static xml files for the package data. Now KDE switched to OCS as real REST based client/server protocol where more interactive features are possible. I think OCS is the more powerful approach.

* Of course for us, in addition gives us the ability to drop the updater applet) ** KPackageKit will be renamed Apper or something like that *** Richard is open to add changes to the schema/spec if it help our neeeds.

Cheers Frank -- Frank Karlitschek karlitschek@kde.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

On 11/04/2010 12:52 PM, Duncan Mac-Vicar P. wrote:

...

This was the approach we had with the old GHNS where we used static xml files for the package data. Now KDE switched to OCS as real REST based client/server protocol where more interactive features are possible.

I think OCS is the more powerful approach.

Sure, for the appstore I think something like GHNS is the way to go. However we use PackageKit for the updates (as an applet), and it would be good to have it integrated as well, so that if an update comes, and there is appdata for it, you see the update as one app.

What do you think?

btw, Daniel Nicoletti (KPackageKit developer) is also very open to integrate the Application support so it can also use the OCS API directly in addition to the desktop.db thing. So we could start with a helper to pull some app data from OCS into desktop.db while KPackageKit gets real OCS support. At least it would solve our problem of a friendly updater. The need for a packagekit based updater is that we have features like notifications of patch messages, distribution upgrade notifications and start of the dist-upgrade workflow, etc. -- Duncan Mac-Vicar P. - Novell® Making IT Work As One™ SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org