GTG

Bug #591747
Comment #3

Comment 3 for bug 591747

Revision history for this message

Mathieu Bridon (bochecha) wrote on 2010-06-09:

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 )

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 :)

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

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 )