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Hi, |
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I'm working on a portage backend for PackageKit [1]. |
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As I did not really present my project, you have to know PackageKit is |
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an universal (distribution-wide) package manager. To do so, every |
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package manager which wants to work with PackageKit have to follow an api. |
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PackageKit is compatible with a lot of package managers. Actually, it's |
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the default one in Fedora and some other distributions. |
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The main advantage of using PackageKit is to have a simple application |
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working in most distributions. It will be a great advantage to make |
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Gentoo more user-friendly. With a USE-flag GUI manager, it could be |
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really great. |
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|
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The main difficulties for this project is the source-based aspect of |
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Gentoo and the verbosity of portage. I mean even if PackageKit is |
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designed to fit every needs, portage backend is the first source-based |
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distribution backend and we will have to adapt some things. In addition, |
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some information provided by portage like ewarn and elog messages and |
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new configuration files have to be prompted even when using PackageKit. |
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So, where are we right now ? |
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The planning says "every basic features should be done June 15th". |
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Actually, I still have to do 2 features : list update candidates and do |
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update. Every other basic features (install, remove, sync, details, dep, |
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reverse-dep, groups, ...) have been done. |
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To my defense, that's three days I'm sick. |
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In addition, as PackageKit refuses interactivity, I've pushed |
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ACCEPT_LICENSE default value to remove interactivity from ebuilds using |
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check_license function from eutils eclass. |
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What's going to be done right now ? |
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Repositories management have to be added. With zmedico, we were talking |
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about doing this directly in the portage api. Basically, it will be |
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merging layman into portage. It's not 100% sure right now but probable. |
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Beginning the hard work of messages management and bug fixes. |
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I will try, to add needed ebuilds in the tree this week to let people |
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test PackageKit on Gentoo as it will be "usable" even if not recommended |
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yet. That's what we call an alpha version I think ;) |
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[1] http://packagekit.org/ |
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Thanks, |
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Mounir |
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