On Sat, 2022-03-26 at 18:33 +1030, Simon Lees wrote:
Ack. Hiding the non-official repos would make the tool essentially useless. With just official repos, it couldn't do much more than "zypper search" + "zypper install" would be able to achieve.
Yeah I guess that's part of my point, if as a project we decide that we don't want to push 3rd party repo's then maybe we don't really need a tool like software.o.o, sure it's nice to have but the project won't fall apart and won't be less useable without it.
I disagree. In my experience, Leap needs 3rd party repos to be usable for anything but basic tasks. I don't think I've ever used Leap on any system for more than a few months without needing 3rd party repos at least temporarily.
If people actually want it then they can work on it but maybe the better question is what packages are "general users" rather then "power users" actually using from 3rd party repos and can we get those into the distros they use so they don't actually need the tool.
Power users don't need software.o.o. They can use osc or whatever else, use containers, or just build and install locally. We need this exactly for those "general users". Users have highly diverse interests. It's naïve to believe that Leap's default package selection would satisfy them all.
I suppose Flatpak et al. can partly fill the gap (forgetting for a moment that Flatpak users tend to receive discouraging comments in the openSUSE community). But 3rd party repos are not just for non-standard applications. They may be required for updates of packages we deliver, or even bug fixes. If you have a bug that prevents you from working, more often than not you'd rather install an update package from a home project that fixes the bug than wait until the bug fix passes the maintenance queue.
Martin