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

Jannis Pohlmann info at sten-net.de
Wed Aug 24 17:47:46 CEST 2005


Benedikt Meurer schrieb:
> Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
> 
>>>>>Marking them is a good idea, but changing the background color is a bad 
>>>>>idea, as it goes against the selected theme. Better add an icon to the row.
>>>>
>>>>Ah, right. Well, I already planned using icons to make the difference
>>>>between package types visual but once we've got icons for that we can
>>>>add a check mark to them or something which cannot be overseen (and of
>>>>course, this should be explained somewhere).
>>>
>>>
>>>Definitely, but don't override user choices by changing the background 
>>>color of tree view rows. Personally, I'd even prefer to have only one 
>>>row per package and if the user selects a row for which both source and 
>>>binary packages are available, popup a dialog:
>>>
>>> "Do you want to use binary package instead of compiling?"
>>> [x] Remember my choice
>>> [Yes] [No]
>>>
>>
>>
>>Personally, I don't this idea. Maybe you want to install one package
>>from source and another directly using a binary. I think we should
>>separate the different package formats/types from each other. So for
>>example (the layout is ugly, I know ...):
>>
>>  |             |                     |
>>  +-------------+---------------------+
>>  | source-icon | Terminal 0.3.5      |
>>  +-------------+---------------------+
>>  | rpm-icon    | Terminal 0.3.5      |
>>  +-------------+---------------------+
>>  |             |                     |
> 
> 
> What I don't like here is that the user always has to check the icon. In 
> 99.99% of all cases you don't care if InstallIt compiles from source or 
> installs a binary package. You just want it to install the package.
> 
> The fact that it supports both source and binary installation is more or 
> less an implementation detail, which should not be exposed too much to 
> the user interface.
> 

Okay, perhaps we should add the strings "(Source)" and "(RPM)" at the
end of the package name (version will be in the info table) to make it
even easier to understand.

Well, I thought about the way of choosing between source and binary for
a while and you're right: We should ask it once and then only install
source packages where no binaries are available. This way we still
separate development snapshots (or whatever) from official releases
without any effort.

- Jannis



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