goodies-management

[Jannis Pohlmann]

Brian J. Tarricone schrieb:
> Benedikt Meurer wrote:
> 
>>>Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Option B)
>>>>
>>>> A "real" goodies manager for listing/downloading/installing goodies
>>>> from source.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> I haven't finished reading the entire thread, so this may be menioned
> elsewhere, but in my mind, this isn't enough.  There needs to be a
> mechanism to download and install precompiled packages (whether they're
> .debs, RPMs, Solaris pkgs, etc.).  It seems to me that the whole point
> of this goodies manager is to make it easier on newbies and "average
> joes" to learn about other available packages and install them easily.
> We can't assume they have a full set of compiler tools and the
> appropriate -devel packages installed.
> 
> This can, of course, be done in steps.  Implement the build-from-source
> option only, but design the ability to list and install binary packages
> into the XML format, something like this:
> 
> <binary-pkg os='linux' sub-os='fedora'
>       os-ver='4'>http://mirror.xfce.org/downloads/foo.rpm</binary-pkg>
> <binary-pkg os='solaris'
>       os-ver='9'>http://mirror.xfce.org/downloads/foo.local</binary-pkg>
> 
> (Damned line wrapping.)  I'm sure this can be improved, that's just my
> 5-second idea.  Ideally, some OS/distro detection can be built into the
> goodies manager as well so the user doesn't have to pick their distro
> from a list.  For the far future, maybe an 'advanced' mode where the
> user can ignore the binary package and compile from source to change
> compile options (ssl vs. no ssl for mailwatch, for example).
> 
> Anyway, just my thoughts.  This sounds like a really cool idea, and I
> hope something useful comes out of it.  I'm afraid my python-phobia will
> preculde much development effort from me, otherwise I'd help out more
> than just throwing suggestions around ^_^.
> 
> 	-brian
> 

Providing binary packages as well as source tarballs is just fine for
me. Johannes and I also discussed about something grouping packages into
a meta-package. This way the user can either install each part of Xfce
solely or install Xfce as a whole (like the graphical installer from
Benedikt does, just one package after the other).

Another idea we had was an offline mode. We could provide a simple
script or something which the user can use to build up his one
webserver-based main + mirror server. Then, he can download all packages
he likes to have, modify the package list and adjust the manager
settings to use his local webserver instead of the default one. Great
for internal company networks or so.

Thanks for your ideas,
Jannis