We've been working on a website for browsing (rating, commenting,
etc) available applications for Fedora. As part of that we wanted
to be able to install/run software from the website.

I spent the last day hacking up a quick browser plugin:

If the package is not installed but is available in the package
repository, the plugin will show:

+------------------------------------+
| _Install GNU Backgammon Now_ |
| Version: 20061119-14.fc9 |
+------------------------------------+

Click on the plugin, and it will fire off gpk-install-package to install
the package; the display changes to:

+------------------------------------+
| GNU Backgammon |
| Installing... |
+------------------------------------+

once that is done (or if the package was already installed), the plugin
will show:

+------------------------------------+
| _Run GNU Backgammon_ |
| Installed version: 20061119-14.fc9 |
+------------------------------------+

Given wide usage of PackageKit and availability of the plugin, this
could also be pretty neat to put on third-party project pages. The
information you provide as parameters to the plugin is:

The name of the application for display
A list of possible package names
A list of possible desktop file names for the application

So it should be pretty robust against inter-distro differences in
package names.

README File:

http://git.fishsoup.net/cgit/packagekit-plugin/tree/README

Getting the source:

git clone git://git.fishsoup.net/packagekit-plugin

What do people think... does this make sense as part of the PackageKit
project?

- Owen


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On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 14:39 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
> What do people think... does this make sense as part of the PackageKit
> project?

Sure looks interesting, mayber we could integrate it with the Fedora
packageDB?

~spot

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On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 10:42 AM, Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa@redhat.com> wrote:
> Sure looks interesting, mayber we could integrate it with the Fedora
> packageDB?

Do you mean integrating it with our web interface for the packagedb?

I think everything Owen mentioned with regard to the website interface
he's been working on should be considered for integration with our
packagedb. If for examples users are commenting through the new
website interface on a package that I maintain.... shouldn't I have a
way to review those comments or in the case of negative comments turn
them into bug tickets? I'm not sure I understand what Owen is working
on and how its going to help contributors interface with users better.

-jef

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Owen Taylor wrote:

We've been working on a website for browsing (rating, commenting,
etc) available applications for Fedora. As part of that we wanted
to be able to install/run software from the website.

I spent the last day hacking up a quick browser plugin:


Sounds like a great idea. I got the source and tried to compile it but I
get this error:


src/contents.cpp: In member function 'void PkpContents::recheck()':
src/contents.cpp:119: error: cannot convert 'const char*' to 'PkFilterEnum'
for argument '2' to 'gboolean pk_client_resolve(PkClient*, PkFilterEnum,
const gchar*, GError**)'

make[2]: *** [packagekit_plugin_la-contents.lo] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/dennis/Downloads/source/packagekit-plugin'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/dennis/Downloads/source/packagekit-plugin'
make: *** [all] Error 2

Does the plugin require a specific version of PackageKit?

Regards,
Dennis

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On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 11:01 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 10:42 AM, Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa@redhat.com> wrote:
> > Sure looks interesting, mayber we could integrate it with the Fedora
> > packageDB?
>
> Do you mean integrating it with our web interface for the packagedb?

Basic idea is that the Application Browsing web app feeds off the
packagedb to get information about available package versions and to
get a first cut at applications which are human-edited and pruned.
(Applications are approximately desktop files, but not quite.)

Then the Application Browsing Web App uses the package names (which it
knows about from the packagedb) when generating the code to embed
the plugin.

But the actual display in the plugin is coming from yum via PackageKit,
since that's what determines what the user can install at the moment,
even if something newer is in packagedb.

> I think everything Owen mentioned with regard to the website interface
> he's been working on should be considered for integration with our
> packagedb. If for examples users are commenting through the new
> website interface on a package that I maintain.... shouldn't I have a
> way to review those comments or in the case of negative comments turn
> them into bug tickets? I'm not sure I understand what Owen is working
> on and how its going to help contributors interface with users better.

The basic idea is that:

- Browsing and installing can be done anonymously
- Some operations are available to any registered FAS user
(comment/rate/upload screenshots)
- Some operations are restricted to owner of the package that
corresponds to the application (edit the description, perhaps)

Email notifications to package owners when comments are made is almost
certainly a desirable feature. Catch me or robin on IRC if you want to
discuss things in more detail.

- Owen


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On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 21:14 +0200, Dennis J. wrote:
> Owen Taylor wrote:
> > We've been working on a website for browsing (rating, commenting,
> > etc) available applications for Fedora. As part of that we wanted
> > to be able to install/run software from the website.
> >
> > I spent the last day hacking up a quick browser plugin:
>
> Sounds like a great idea. I got the source and tried to compile it but I
> get this error:
>
> src/contents.cpp: In member function 'void PkpContents::recheck()':
> src/contents.cpp:119: error: cannot convert 'const char*' to 'PkFilterEnum'
> for argument '2' to 'gboolean pk_client_resolve(PkClient*, PkFilterEnum,
> const gchar*, GError**)'
> make[2]: *** [packagekit_plugin_la-contents.lo] Error 1
> make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/dennis/Downloads/source/packagekit-plugin'
> make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/dennis/Downloads/source/packagekit-plugin'
> make: *** [all] Error 2
>
> Does the plugin require a specific version of PackageKit?

I developed it against PackageKit-0.1.x, let me upgrade to 0.2.x from
updates-testing and see if I can reproduce and fix the above. Richard
keeps on telling me that 0.2.x is amazingly better anyways.

- Owen


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On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Owen Taylor <otaylor@redhat.com> wrote:
> Email notifications to package owners when comments are made is almost
> certainly a desirable feature. Catch me or robin on IRC if you want to
> discuss things in more detail.

Email.. take it or leave it. Some people will think its noise..
there's no win-win for email notification as a feature.

What I care about is trying to minimize the number of different web
interfaces that I or any other contributor needs to interact with to
get things done..including communicating with users about the specific
packages. We already have a web interface for packagedb related
items. Is this new interface that you are working on meant to be a
replacement to what we currently have at
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/ ? Or is it meant to supplement
it? I would strongly suggest working towards replacing the current
interface that both contributors and users are expected to interact
with. If I'm going to be expected to use the existing
interface...while users are expected to use a new and completely
different interface...we've widened the communication gap..even with
email notifications turned on.

-jef

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On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 14:39 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
> We've been working on a website for browsing (rating, commenting,
> etc) available applications for Fedora. As part of that we wanted
> to be able to install/run software from the website.

Awesome. I've been sitting, staring at Xbox Live Arcade and wondering
when we can get similar ease of use.

> Given wide usage of PackageKit and availability of the plugin, this
> could also be pretty neat to put on third-party project pages. The
> information you provide as parameters to the plugin is:
>
> The name of the application for display
> A list of possible package names
> A list of possible desktop file names for the application
>
> So it should be pretty robust against inter-distro differences in
> package names.

Icky. In the long run what we really need is to put a UUID field into
the .desktop specification, and instruct upstream projects to generate a
UUID for their application. Ta da, a reliable, cross-distribution, and
package manager neutral way to uniquely identify an application.
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On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 15:22 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 21:14 +0200, Dennis J. wrote:
> > Owen Taylor wrote:
> > > We've been working on a website for browsing (rating, commenting,
> > > etc) available applications for Fedora. As part of that we wanted
> > > to be able to install/run software from the website.
> > >
> > > I spent the last day hacking up a quick browser plugin:
> >
> > Sounds like a great idea. I got the source and tried to compile it but I
> > get this error:
> >
> > src/contents.cpp: In member function 'void PkpContents::recheck()':
> > src/contents.cpp:119: error: cannot convert 'const char*' to 'PkFilterEnum'
> > for argument '2' to 'gboolean pk_client_resolve(PkClient*, PkFilterEnum,
> > const gchar*, GError**)'
> > make[2]: *** [packagekit_plugin_la-contents.lo] Error 1
> > make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/dennis/Downloads/source/packagekit-plugin'
> > make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
> > make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/dennis/Downloads/source/packagekit-plugin'
> > make: *** [all] Error 2
> >
> > Does the plugin require a specific version of PackageKit?
>
> I developed it against PackageKit-0.1.x, let me upgrade to 0.2.x from
> updates-testing and see if I can reproduce and fix the above. Richard
> keeps on telling me that 0.2.x is amazingly better anyways.

OK, should compile and work now if you repull.

- Owen


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Jeff Spaleta (jspaleta@gmail.com) said:
> it? I would strongly suggest working towards replacing the current
> interface that both contributors and users are expected to interact
> with. If I'm going to be expected to use the existing
> interface...while users are expected to use a new and completely
> different interface...we've widened the communication gap..even with
> email notifications turned on.

Does anyone actually use packagedb to browse for available software?

Bill

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