On 5/5/07, Pascal Bleser
Definitely. Webpin is a great tool, but there is an issue with it: hosting. We definitely need a more reliable hosting solution for it (and Benjamin would be the first one to agree, he already wrote an email about that): http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2007-04/msg00128.html
The legal aspects are biting us again. Because it also indexes and references packages that are on Packman and Guru, it may not be hosted by Novell. OTOH, not indexing Packman and Guru would make the tool only half as useful.
Actually the legal aspects are not an issue of hosting, the frontend (which we can host on opensuse-community.org can utilise multiple search services, one of which could be hosted by Novell, and the other indexing packman & guru etc would be hosted by the community still. AdrianS indicated they could help with hosting, but not until more resources are available.
I really think that at some point, we should find a reliable hosting solution (not in the USA because of its legislation) for community projects like that, funded by donations (PayPal).
I agree, but I think there is significant growth required before we will need, or be able to afford this.
The speed of zypp and friends should improve in 10.3, so we'll see.
Yes, that would be good. And then, IMO the focus should be put on usability of the package manager (adding/removing/refreshing repositories, finding/installing packages, installing patches/online updates, upgrading packages (including from 3rd party repos), etc...).
Hear, Hear. Although there has been some progress (pun intended) in 10.2, it is still essentially the same GUI designed for 8.1. Back then installing software from CDs was the only significant use case.
But frankly, instead of always blaming Novell/SUSE and the developers, we should come up with some discussion and brainstorming on what we would like to see and what we think would be a good solution both for beginners and for advanced users. And then send a proposal to the developers (or possibly do some implementation work ourselves).
Indeed, and this is beginning to happen, but the bottleneck always remains the SUSE people who are not being proactive in engaging with these efforts. We need public planning of development "sprints" with the community actively involved and aware of what is going on, and being encouraged to participate. Right now we have the situation where SUSE people do things behind closed doors for a while, and announce their status at status meetings. No-one outside knows what is underway or how to get involved. The recent opening of the development process of yast+zypp is a shining example of how things should have been done from the start. Congratulations to those responsible, and hopefully the effort will pay off.
It seems easy to implement, but getting a list of those repositories is problematic for legal reasons.
It would be easy to do either from api.opensuse.org (this doesn't have any public features at present so can't be used). Or from my search service, expanding something like: http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/searchservice/SearchService/Repos/openSUSE_102 to also include descriptions and other metadata from the .repo files on the build service. I have an example YaST based frontend to the search service in the MetaPackage-Package you kindly made for me. Install http://benjiweber.co.uk/mp/yast2-mpp-0.0-0.suse102.noarch.rpm and run "/sbin/YaST2 PackageSearch" to play. Screenshot: http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/packagesearch-yast.png . The "Install Now" hooks into the automatically generated meta-packages from the SearchService to add the repository and install the package automatically. The same principle could be used to make a list of repositories with checkboxes as per Alberto's suggestion.
Yet, maybe having a "meta-repository" (sort of a "repository of repositories") hosted elsewhere (e.g. opensuse-community.org) could be a solution.
Something like http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/searchservice/SearchService/Repos/openSUSE_102 with more information I think.
Have the right tool support out-of-the-box in YaST2, but just add a single meta-repository URL and also have the 3rd party repositories in the list. Again, hosting, see above.
Indeed.
Another possible solution would be to make it possible to click on the webpin link and install the package you need. But it doesn't sound that easy to me too, because of the dependencies issues.
Precisely. But Benjamin is also working on that: having files that not only have a list of packages to install with a single click (more or less), but also dependent repositories that are added if not already present.
Indeed, see the above meta-package-package and http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/webpin/index-test.jsp to play.
But the most difficult part with such an approach is certainly the browser, much more than the package manager side of things: 1) associating a MIME type in Konqueror+Firefox+Seamonkey with an application that handles parses the file, adds missing repositories, passes the package installation to sw_single or zypper (or smart) 2) security... with a tool like that, you definitely have to think about security: * setup+use sudo or replicate user delegation (as in ZMD) or prompt for the root password to add repositories and packages * always prompt the user for confirmation before doing anything * package signatures, RPM keyring (is mostly already handled by YaST2 though, when adding a signed repository) * put some thoughts into malicious misuse of that technology to sneak in rootkit packages and how to circumvent it
My demo yast module for this: - Prompts user for root password /after/ displaying all the information about what will be done to the system to make malicious use as easy for the user to detect as possible. - All the Package Signature checking etc is provided by the yast package installation/ repository handling api already, so done for us. _ Benjamin Weber --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org