GNOME-PackageKit packaging

[Matthias Klumpp]

On Sun, 21 Nov 2010 18:01:45 +0100, Josselin Mouette <joss at debian.org>
wrote:
> Le dimanche 21 novembre 2010 à 17:16 +0100, Matthias Klumpp a écrit : 
>> I package GNOME-PackageKit for Debian (ITP: #604062) and wanted to ask
if
>> this package should be part of the GNOME packaging project, since
>> GNOME-PackageKit is an official GNOME component.
>> I would do the initial packaging etc. but I might need some help from
the
>> GNOME team in maintaining the package, especially for the GNOME3
>> transition.
> 
> We already have sessioninstaller, and I’d prefer if we had only one
> package manager backend that works well instead of 10 that work badly.
There are three choices at time: PackageKit + APTcc, PackageKit + APT and
SessionInstaller + APTd.
In my opinion the best choice is PackageKit + APTcc, cause it consumes
less memory (written in C++) and has full Debconf support, as KPackageKit
and GNOME-PackageKit have too, as well as all PK command-line tools.
Also, APTcc has a very active upstream and has less bugs.
GNOME-PackageKit is a PackageKit *frontend*, so it might be possible to
use GNOME-PackageKit with SI too. (But currently SI is not really
feature-complete and also has some bugs. Last time I tried to use SI with
KPK instead of the original PackageKit daemon, it didn't work)

> We really need to sit down and think about the future of package
> management for the desktop. The situation in squeeze is not a
> sustainable one, and misguided upstream choices (such as PackageKit) do
> not help.
Is SI used somewhere in Squeeze? I'm not familiar with the current
situation in Squeeze, but it can't be that bad, otherwise that stuff won't
be shipped.
Could you please tell me why you think the PackageKit concept is
'misguided'? The design of PK is - in my opinion - excellent, except for
the missing Debconf support. So we sat down for this topic and the APTcc
author created a Debian-compliant solution for Debconf in the APTcc
backend, which Richard Hughes implemented in GPK and all tools which use
lpackagekit-glib2 too. See
http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2010/11/02/packagekit-and-debian-2/ for more
information.
So there is no policy conflict between PK and Debian anymore, or do I miss
something? Another thing: PK is not designed to replace Synaptic, aptitude
or any other APT tool. It just provides simple tools for the PK user
profiles (normal, non-technical users) and a distribution-neutral way for
applications to access package management. So see it as an extension for
package management, not as an replacement.
Kind regards
   Matthias