launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Michael Nelson <michael.nelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 12:51 AM, Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 24 March 2010 03:34, Michael Nelson <michael.nelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I've attached a few images to:
>> https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/soyuz/+bug/496862
>>
>> for convenience, the screenshots are
>> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/41732742/ppa-installable-binaries-wide.png
>> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/41738415/ppa-installable-binaries-narrow.png
>
> Thanks for working on this, and for posting screenshots.  I think it
> is an important part of the ppa story.
>
> I presume the "Uploading packages" bit is hidden if you're not in the
> ppa owner team.

Yes, it's only displayed if the viewer has upload permissions.

>
> In the best case, the description field gives people good
> human-written information about what's in this PPA and whether they
> should use it.  So it should be at least as large and prominent as the
> rest.

Yes, that would be a great improvement (the project page does this
really well). Created
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/soyuz/+bug/547031 (I'll aim to land it
in the same pipe of branches).

>
> With the individual packages: your current approach makes the
> Description field very prominent, but that's only going to be
> interesting in some cases, and as you can see in this example it tends
> to be a bit repetitive when there are binaries.

I wasn't sure if that was just this pocketsphinx package that I did.
I'll check a few other PPAs on df. Here's a more realistic example:

http://launchpadlibrarian.net/42034558/fta-ppa-with-installables.png

As you can see, the repetition is still there (due to the way binaries
are packaged), but it's not quite as bad as my own example.

>  Not all Debian
> packages have really user-oriented summaries.

Yeah. I guess my question is, is it the best we have and still worth
displaying? Or do you mean it should only be displayed when the user
wants more info (ie. expanding the row?).

>
> If the package is an update or backport of one in Ubuntu, the
> description is not so interesting compared to knowing what's new in
> the changelog relative to what's in Ubuntu.   A bit like the way a
> merge proposal shows you what revisions are new on this branch.

Yes, this is you bug 496458 right? I'm not sure that we can
realistically (performance-wise) do any better than showing the last
changelog entry (as the current source packages do). I'm not sure how
we could efficiently do a delta of the changelog relative to ubuntu,
but I'll look into it.

>
> Similarly if the package is just not in Ubuntu at all that's
> interesting.

Why is this interesting to a user (ie. it won't be installed by adding
the PPA unless they explicitly install it)? And knowing you'll have a
good reason, how do you see that being presented? (An small icon
representing something new, with relevant text on mouse-over - or
something more prominent?)

> And if the PPA is out of date, that's interesting too.

See below, I think this is what the "newer version" is for (ie. the
version of the package in the PPA is older than the version in the
Distroseries.)

>
> Would it be feasible to add a column showing what's in, say
> $distrorelease-updates?  And have the version number link to a
> changelog?

Yes, that'd certainly be possible. Ah right, as this would enable the
user to see the difference between the changelogs when they want to?
(So currently we only link to a *newer* version in the distroseries,
but you're saying it would also be helpful to link to the changelog of
the current distroseries version). This would also communicate whether
the package is not in Ubuntu at all as you suggested above.

>
> I'm not sure what "newer version available" would mean without
> clicking it.  Available where?

I think it's what you mentioned above, it's showing that the PPA is
out of date and that there is a newer version available in the
corresponding Ubuntu distro series. Which implies that we should
update the note to include the distroseries display name? "Newer
version available in Ubuntu 10.04", or update this info completely and
present it in its own column as you've suggested above.

>
>> I want to continue to improve the usefulness of this page for users
>> (and developers providing a PPA for users), for eg. bug 496458, and in
>> the long term, I hope we can re-use the software centre meta-data to
>> additionally provide installable applications when they are defined
>> (with their screenshots etc.)
>
> Also showing an html/rss view of the changes to packages in this ppa
> would give an interesting view of activity.  A bit like what is shown
> in the Update Manager.

You might want to add your weight with a comment to bug 207333 :)

Thanks Martin for the considerable thought and feedback!

-Michael

>
> hth
>
> --
> Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>
>