This might be interesting for a couple of people of this list.
Klaus
----- Forwarded message from Dan Kegel -----
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 01:56:46 -0700
From: Dan Kegel
To: packaging@lists.freestandards.org
Subject: [packaging] Quick usability test of app battery on Ubuntu
Hi all,
I missed the first part of the packaging discussion at DAM-4,
but attended the tail end. The notes from the discussion
are online at
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Dam-4_breakout_packaging
There was talk about the LSB App Battery at the meeting, so
I decided to see if the average Ubuntu user could
easily install and use those LSB-packaged apps.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/appbat is the home page for the
app battery. For x86, it directs the user to
http://ftp.freestandards.org/pub/lsb/app-battery/released/ia32/
which is a raw list of downloadable packages, e.g.
http://ftp.freestandards.org/pub/lsb/app-battery/released/ia32/lsb-xpaint_2....
Clicking on that link on my Ubuntu Feisty system did in fact
download and install the package with very little fuss,
and the app does run. Yay!
There were some hitches in the user experience, though.
Here's a (fairly picky) list; don't worry if some of these are unreasonable.
0. The user has to know where to go to download the app
battery. Ideally the apps in the app battery
should show up in Feisty's "Add/Remove Software"
program, where users normally go to look for software.
1. When I ran Feisty's "Add/Remove Software" program, and
asked it to show me all installed software, lsb-xpaint didn't show up!
(Is that list solely driven by repositories somehow?)
2. The app did not integrate into my system menus.
It really should, shouldn't it? Even though this would require a minor
violation of the /opt rule, I think it's worth it. We certainly do
this for Picasa.
3. The app did not show up on my default path
(and indeed, feisty has its own xpaint, so there's a minor clash).
I suspect we should call the binary lsb-xpaint, and put a link to it
in /usr/bin,
even though that violates the /opt rule (again, we do this for Picasa, otherwise
users will hate us).
4. If the package lsb-core is not installed,
the lsb-xpaint package will happily install, but running
/opt/lsb/appbat/bin/xpaint
just says
bash: /opt/lsb/appbat/bin/xpaint: No such file or directory
Ideally the package would either have refused to install,
or would have automatically triggered the install of lsb-core
etc. (I don't recall if lsb-core is installed by default on Feisty.
I suppose it is, but I don't know how to check. If it's not,
that's a big black mark for usability.)
In my copious spare time, perhaps I will look into addressing
a few of these issues.
- Dan
_______________________________________________
packaging mailing list
packaging@lists.freestandards.org
http://lists.freestandards.org/mailman/listinfo/packaging
----- End forwarded message -----
---
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org
