gtg team mailing list archive

["Mathieu Bridon \(bochecha\)" <bochecha@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree that only one subpackage is not ideal for the user regarding
dependencies. However, one subpackage per plugin adds some churn in the
repositories metadata for very few actual code (each plugin being a very
simple piece of code).

Maybe a tradeoff could be found, like grouping together plugins that
have similar dependencies, or that help achieve similar tasks, etc...
I'll try to think about that.

About the apt:// url, we have something like that in Fedora too: the
PackageKit API.

The good thing about it is that it is completely cross-distributions, and already adopted in several upstream Gnome projects:
 - double-click on a file for which you have no application able to handle it, Nautilus will ask PackageKit to present the user a list of applications that can be installed that would handle this mimetype
 - open a multimedia file for which no codec is installed, Gstreamer will ask PackageKit to present the user a list of packages containing the required codecs to play the file
 - open a document in Abiword, a web page in Epiphany (or just anything that tries to display "exotic" characters), Pango (I think it's Pango, I would have to verify that though) will ask PackageKit to present the user a list of available fonts that would be able to display those Chinese characters present in the file
 - plug a printer for which you don't have the drivers on your system, system-config-printer will ask PackageKit to present the user the possibility to install the proper driver
 - etc...

The downside is that not all distributions adopted it yet. But if it
didn't stop Gstreamer, Nautilus, system-config-printer and more every 6
months, I can't see any reason it should stop GTG :)

Imagine the plugin dialog in GTG, with a nice "find more plugins" button
that would launch the native package manager of the distribution through
PackageKit and present the user the list of available plugins, and if
the user desires, install them along with their dependencies. Did I
mention it would work both on Gnome, KDE, and just any other desktop
environment that has a PackageKit front-end?

And thanks to the PackageKit browser plugin, you could do the same on
your website (again, just like the apt:// link, but cross-
distributions).

What? You say Debian/Ubuntu won't adopt PackageKit for politico-technical reasons? Fear not, for the sessioninstaller they are developing aims to implement the PackageKit DBus API, so all applications using PackageKit will work the same with sessioninstaller.
    http://wiki.debian.org/SessionInstaller

That seems like the proper solution for GTG to advertise its plugins to
me. ;)


PS: I didn't package GTG in Fedora, Yanko did. I only offered him my
help to co-maintain it. Sorry to nitpick, I only wanted to not take
credit for Yanko's work. :)

PPS: to my knowledge, there isn't any Windows backend for PackageKit (
yet? :P )

-- 
Split plugins in separate packages (in Fedora)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/591747
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Gtg
contributors, which is subscribed to Getting Things GNOME!.

Status in Getting Things GNOME!: New

Bug description:
>From bug 493269, by https://edge.launchpad.net/~bochecha
=====================================================

(Disclaimer: I co-maintain GTG in Fedora)

Just for the record, I think this is a packaging issue in Fedora.

I had seen the issue and was planning on fixing it properly in the package by:
1. splitting the plugins into a subpackage
2. making the gtg-plugins package require the necessary Python modules
3. making sure those modules are properly packaged in Fedora
4. eventually, if that's worth it, splitting each plugin in its own subpackage, each one requiring its own Python dependencies

Like I said, I wanted to do that when I would find the time, and obviously discuss that with upstream GTG (i.e. you). I don't have the time right now, but I just found this bug report, so I guess this is a rather good place to open this discussion.

So what do you think? Does splitting the plugins from the core GTG make sense from a packaging perspective? Does splitting each plugin in its own subpackage make sense?

What's your take on this?

PS: I didn't want to reopen the bug as it's a slightly parallel issue and it's relative to a downstream distributor, should this bug be reopen? Should I open a new one?