Thanks for keeping us all in the loop; some really nice things going on there.

On 4/25/07, Benji Weber b.weber@warwick.ac.uk wrote:

• I've been working on improving the performance of the trawler, I can

now from a clean database locate, download, parse, index the metadata for the main official/community & build service repositories in under half an hour on my desktop. (That's ~900 repositories, ~110,000 packages including summaries/descriptions, ~16,000,000 files), incremental updates where only some repositories have changed are much faster.

This is really awesome news; so people now will be able to get really up-to-date package results/information even on Factory, I take it?

• Integration with the simple software installation (explained below)

that I've been proposing, with "Install now" links on

    http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/webpin/index-test.jsp

= Simple Software Installation =

The vast majority of the questions we face when there are not serious things wrong with the distribution are related to issues such as installation of third party software, multimedia codecs etc. Explaining to new users the concept of package repositories, how to add these, and subsequently install software is not trivial. Furthermore, users should not be forced to grasp these concepts in order to easily install software, in my opinion.

To solve this we could have a simple file handler that can handle links in web pages or files on distributable media which automates the process of adding repositories and installing software.

• I've set up a wiki page outlining the concept at

http://en.opensuse.org/MetaPackage-design

• I've created a functional prototype yast module, Pascal has kindly

made a package which you can try at:

    http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/mp/yast2-mpp-0.0-0.suse102.noarch.rpm

    After installing this you can try out some demo uses at

            http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/test.html
            The "install now" links on http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/webpin/index-test.jsp

            Currently the above will only work with konqueror, unless you create

the associations manually for firefox/opera in the same way as they are configured in konqueror (this is possible, but difficult to package without having the configuration in the upstream distribution package)

This is exciting stuff as well, _particularly_ with the design of the OBS (hundreds of repositories); I really really hope we can get this kind of stuff in for 10.3 by default, so users don't have to worry about adding a repository and then adding the package.

            Martin Schandler is creating a demo page to show how this could be

used to simplify codec installation, for now hopefully you can use your imagination.

So it'll be even easier for users to get the fuller OS experience quickly :)

= Future =

    - Search service joint hosting Novell/Community, adrianS is looking into this.
    - Migration of the frontend to the search to opensuse-community.org
    - Fix ycp/perl to a releasable state. (someone who knows what they're doing)
    - Improve the "Install now" functionality of the search service, by

calculating the repositories each package depends on (it isn't always just the one the package is located in). I am currently investigating either a simple method looking at the repository dependencies in the build service and manual setup for repositories outside the build service, and a far more complicated method using the rpm requires & depends.

So are there going to be any reasonable methods for detecting duplicate repositories?

    - Integration with new build service features such as statistics,

using the search service statistics to improve results. - Using search service to enrich client side software.

What kind of things can we hope for? Are these likely to be integrated into 10.3? With all the zypp work around I guess there won't really be any editing to the software frontends?

Kind thoughts,

On Wednesday 25 April 2007 18:13, Benji Weber wrote:

Greetings all,

I thought I'd send an email out summarising some of the things I have been working on recently, to obtain some feedback, and maybe even some help.

= Package Search =

• This is back up for the time being, although I am not confident of

it staying up for long, if it's down or slow when you read this email I apologise. adrianS has kindly offered to help with hosting when they have some more resources.

• Set up a design page at http://en.opensuse.org/PKGSearch-design

• Having spent some time reviewing how people were trying to use the

search, I found a large proportion were searching for phrases, not just package names/contents. Therefore I made the package summaries searchable too. eg you could find konversation now with:

http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/webpin/index.jsp?searchTerm=kde+irc+client or http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/webpin/index.jsp?searchTerm=bin%2Fkonversatio n or http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/webpin/index.jsp?searchTerm=konversation

• There was a performance problem with people searching for very

common and short terms such as "qt" or "kde", this should be fixed now.

• I've made some slight modifications to the design based on some

suggestions.

• I've been working on improving the performance of the trawler, I can

now from a clean database locate, download, parse, index the metadata for the main official/community & build service repositories in under half an hour on my desktop. (That's ~900 repositories, ~110,000 packages including summaries/descriptions, ~16,000,000 files), incremental updates where only some repositories have changed are much faster.

• Integration with the simple software installation (explained below)

that I've been proposing, with "Install now" links on

http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/webpin/index-test.jsp

= Simple Software Installation =

The vast majority of the questions we face when there are not serious things wrong with the distribution are related to issues such as installation of third party software, multimedia codecs etc. Explaining to new users the concept of package repositories, how to add these, and subsequently install software is not trivial. Furthermore, users should not be forced to grasp these concepts in order to easily install software, in my opinion.

To solve this we could have a simple file handler that can handle links in web pages or files on distributable media which automates the process of adding repositories and installing software.

• I've set up a wiki page outlining the concept at

http://en.opensuse.org/MetaPackage-design

• I've created a functional prototype yast module, Pascal has kindly

made a package which you can try at:

http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/mp/yast2-mpp-0.0-0.suse102.noarch.rpm

After installing this you can try out some demo uses at

http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/test.html
The "install now" links on

http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/webpin/index-test.jsp

Currently the above will only work with konqueror, unless you create

the associations manually for firefox/opera in the same way as they are configured in konqueror (this is possible, but difficult to package without having the configuration in the upstream distribution package)

Martin Schandler is creating a demo page to show how this could be

used to simplify codec installation, for now hopefully you can use your imagination.

• In the above package there is also a demo yast client to the search

service, you can run with "/sbin/YaST2 PackageSearch" as a normal user, and search for and install packages from the build service in the same way as the "Install now" links on the webpin page.

= What I would like help with =

• Please could people try out the demo prototype metapackage handler

described above, and comment on the concept.

• I know ycp only a little, and perl not at all, so if someone could

fix the above into a releasable quality that would be awesome. (source is also at http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/mp)

= Future =

• Search service joint hosting Novell/Community, adrianS is looking into

this. - Migration of the frontend to the search to opensuse-community.org - Fix ycp/perl to a releasable state. (someone who knows what they're doing)

• Improve the "Install now" functionality of the search service, by

calculating the repositories each package depends on (it isn't always just the one the package is located in). I am currently investigating either a simple method looking at the repository dependencies in the build service and manual setup for repositories outside the build service, and a far more complicated method using the rpm requires & depends.

• Integration with new build service features such as statistics,

using the search service statistics to improve results.

• Using search service to enrich client side software.

That's all I can think of for now.

_ Benjamin Weber

---

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If you haven't tried this simple install package then you are really missing out on some AWESOME programming and usability work!!!!! else if you don't try it and comment, so that the work continues, people will continue to suffer with an antiquated approach to adding software to their favorite distro...openSUSE exit Benjamin.....I bow to your brilliance , keep up the GREAT WORK!!!!!!!

On Friday 27 April 2007 18:46, Scott Jones wrote:

On Wednesday 25 April 2007, Benji Weber wrote:

...

Currently the above will only work with konqueror, unless you create

the associations manually for firefox/opera in the same way as they are configured in konqueror (this is possible, but difficult to package without having the configuration in the upstream distribution package)

For the purposes of testing, a wrapper script to call it can be created, then added as a handler for the text/ymu MIME type in /etc/mailcap or ~/.mailcap.

The script (/sbin/FirefoxMPHandler, in this case):

#!/bin/bash /sbin/YaST2 MetaPackageUrlHandler $@

---

And the mailcap entry: text/ymu;/sbin/FirefoxMPHandler

I've tested this in both Firefox and Seamonkey.

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I hope this simple staller makes it into 10.3 in the SUSE version of firefox or maybe as a desktop app. I have been reading were Mark Shuttlesworth is using his billions to buy Linspires CNR (clickNrun) technology for Ubuntu, of course it's not an openly published purchase, but why else would Linspire opensource it's only real asset. Lord knows the distro itself is unimportant.