* Raymond Wooninck
On Thursday 01 November 2012 13:44:19 Guido Berhoerster wrote:
It wouldn't tkae too much effort to swap out the PackageKit backend in pk-update-icon with a zypper-based one, in fact I do already have a parser for zyppers XML output from some experiments last year. It uses GTK+ but the UI consists only of a tray icon and notification bubble which would open "yast2 online_update" when activated so it should not look alien in KDE. So if there's a rough consensus that we want to go with a minimal notifier and update via YaST's online_update module I could put something together.
It is not only a matter of the effort required to build something small to perform this task. I have no doubt that you are able to deliver what you indicated, but are you willing to maintain this piece of software for the rest of it's lifecycle ? Because if we introduce another piece of software which will not be supported in the future, then we end up exactly at the same place as we are now.
I already do maintain pk-update-icon, so there wouldn't be any change. Besides, this is really simple code (parsing zypper --xmlout, calling zypp-refresh if the cache is outdated, and popping up a libnotify notification with a tray icon if updates are found) with few dependencies so the cost of maintaining it is very low and somebody else could easily take over if the need arises. I will probably have to do it anyway sooner or later if gpk-update-viewer becomes unusable outside of GNOME like so many other GNOME applications.
I guess that we should also be looking at the position we are now. Recently this mailinglist has been flooded with complaints with regards to the tools openSUSE is using for booting, repairtools, etc. There were even some indications that other distributions have much better tools, etc. But as soon as it comes to move to a more distro-independent solution, people are coming up that we can create little programs around the tools we have. There is nothing wrong with this, but is this the position we want to be in ??
That I can't really answer, I'm just saying it's doable with relatively little cost. I also think there is nothing comparable in other distros to the toolset provided by YaST. In particular as a package and update manager it is vastly superior to the various PackageKit frontends where the extra abstraction layer adds a lot of complexity and potential bugs without much of a benefit. -- Guido Berhoerster -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org