GSoC 2009 proposal: Fix update-manager/create new update-manager-like application

[Stephan Peijnik]

Hello pkg-gnome-maintainers,

I just had a look at the Debian GSoC 2009 project proposals [0] and was
wondering whether fixing update-manager or alternatively creating a new
update-manager-like application for Debian would be a possible project
too.

Firstly, let me explain why I even dare to propose creating a new
update-manager-like application.

A few months ago I encountered a bug in update-manager that seems to
prevent one from installing updates, which has been reported twice
already [1][2] (maybe I should merge those bug reports...).
I then had a quick look at porting the current Ubuntu version of
update-manager to Debian, with no success. A lot of code in
update-manager is Ubuntu specific, and will not work for Debian or cause
breakage.
As update-manager is an Ubuntu specific package now there are two
options: 

Either do what has been done before and weed out all non-Debian-specific
code from update-manager and upload that, which is quite tedious work
and I really understand that nobody has bothered to do that yet.

Or, on the other hand, start from scratch and create a new
update-manager-like application.

Personally I believe the latter option is the way to go, because
considering the first option someone would have to port all changes to
Ubuntu's update-manager to Debian's everytime there a bugfix or update
is released. And this probably creates a lot more work than when
starting from scratch.

Secondly, I think I should point out that I would like to work on this
project as a GSoC student. So be aware that I wrote this email because I
am personally interested in actually working on the (possible) project.

-- Stephan

PS: I'm not subscribed to pkg-gnome-maintainers, so please keep me
CC'ed.

[0] http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2009#Projectproposals
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=503584
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=519191