Re: [gentoo-soc] Graphical portage front-end

[Eric Thibodeau]

In short, I agree with Tucold. Some sort of X-independant but aware (thinking curses here) front end to portage + glsa-checks + ability to select another install root (and throw in neworked eclean while at it) come to mind... I could see this as a useful front end to portage for, ie: managing multiple system images on say, the master node of a cluster ;) If one wants to be really neat feature to such an interface, the ability to install the same package onto multiple roots simultaneously.

...my 2c.

Eric Thibodeau

On 2010-03-20, at 7:44 AM, Auke Booij wrote:

> First things first, I would not know why someone should be using a
> graphical installer instead of xterm or one of its colleagues.
>
> Anyway, the problems you are pointing out are exactly what you're
> sacrificing by using a GUI, and exactly the reason Gentoo doesn't have
> a graphical installer (or one that you should be using, anyway). A lot
> of Portage's configuration consists of bash scripts, and any attempt
> to fully reproduce their capabilities in a GUI would lead to a big
> mess (point-and-click programming, *sigh*). If someone desperately
> wants a GUI, it would be for daily Portage activities, and definitely
> not for obscure feature x or y.
>
> Further, resolving dependencies is, in my opinion, outside the scope
> of a GUI. Functionality that isn't present in the command-line version
> of some program shouldn't be added just for the GUI version.
>
> That said, I'm sure some people would love a GUI integration of
> different package management tools (ie. search, install, sync...) into
> one big package, and it would definitely be a nice improvement to
> Sabayon.
>
> tulcod.
>
> On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 12:25 PM, xqyz <xqyzii@×××××.com> wrote:
>> On 20 March 2010 11:16, Petteri Räty <betelgeuse@g.o> wrote:
>>>
>>> Last year we had a project for PackageKit integration that was never
>>> integrated into the main tree. I would rather continue that work and
>>> then any PackageKit GUI could be used with Portage.
>>
>> I agree, it would indeed be nice to have a portage integration in
>> PackageKit, but given the rather unique way of handling packages in Gentoo,
>> I would consider PackageKit to be a rather poor choice for a package
>> manager.
>> USE flags, inability to resolve circular dependencies properly and of course
>> the advanced compile configuration that Gentoo offers are hard, if not
>> impossible to be handled by PackageKit. Which is why I think that, even if
>> there was a working integration of portage, it would not be used much. The
>> problem with Gentoo is that it more often than not requires the users to
>> make a choice instead of just settling for a package and clicking install.
>>
>> --Patrick Lerner
>>
>