[Installit-dev] "package manager " becomes "InstallIt"

[Jannis Pohlmann]

Tuukka Mäkinen schrieb:
> Benedict listed lot of good stuff I wanted to say but I'll post my view of how 
> system might work anyway. Perhaps it'll give some ideas to somebody.
> 
> 
> 1. Check what package manager plugins are installed
> 2. Show package manager selection dialog
> 3. Tell plugin to check if it exists on the system
> 3a. continue
> 3b. Error dialog
> 4. Show main view
> 4a. Get list of available packages from somewhere or use previously fetched list
> 4b. Update the list at some point. Automatically or on request?
>

In regard to those steps, I'd like to show you our first draft for the
main window: http://installit.xfce.org/trac.cgi/wiki/UserInterface

It features

  - a menu with access to preferences and server setup
  - manual update functionality
  - a large listview for displaying packages and package groups
  - a table containing information and an icon dependent on the package
    type
  - "install" and "uninstall" buttons

We shouldn't bug the user with more than that. The download and
installation wizard will be shown once you click install/remove and the
main window will be hidden, then.

> 
> Install:
> 1. Show mirror list dialog with last used mirror preselected
> 2. Download sources for selected package
> 3. Ask installation paths from plugin
> 4. Configure && make & install to temporary location
> 5. Ask plugin to make package from the files in chroot
> 6. Ask plugin to install the created package using platform's package management 
> system.

I disagree with 1.) here. Once you've set up a mirror and fetched the
packages list from there you can't change it after selecting packages
for installation. So on the first run of InstallIt we'll let the user
decide which mirror he wants to use. He can change this later but that
will make the whole package list obsolete.

I have to think about that once again. Perhaps we should store packages
and stuff locally in a directory named after the mirror in order to
separate them from each other mirror's packages. Anyway, I don't like to
mix the mirrors.

- Jannis