Fedora 9 Beta, PackageKit and system-config-printer

[Robin Norwood]

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:35:26 -0500
Michael E Brown <Michael_E_Brown at dell.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 03:54:20PM -0400, seth vidal wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 14:47 -0500, Michael E Brown wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 12:21:38PM -0400, Robin Norwood wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:57:48 +0000
> > > > Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > On Mon, 2008-03-17 at 16:47 -0500, Michael E Brown wrote:
> > > > > > Firmware-tools uses this *extensively*. I would like to port
> > > > > > firmware-tools to use package-kit, but can't really,
> > > > > > without this function. (As opposed to maintaining
> > > > > > instructions for apt, yum, smart, rug, et al. currently.)
> > > > > 
> > > > > I've merged in a WhatProvides() abstract method into
> > > > > packagekit a few minutes ago. I'll add an example as
> > > > > pk-install-depends now, and also make pkcon fall back if
> > > > > there was no package match with pkcon.
> > > > > 
> > > > > This means pkcon install $random_provide should work as you
> > > > > wish.
> > > > 
> > > > Just to clarify, this is in the development version in git, not
> > > > (yet) in the version in Fedora.
> > > 
> > > Random package kit question:
> > > 
> > > Does package kit provide a generic method to set up a yum
> > > repository? (obviously only applicable for RPM-based systems).
> > > Right now that is another one of my pain points: setting up
> > > repositories across suse/fedora/red hat, et al is not possible in
> > > a generic way even though they all support yum repositories.
> > 
> > how do you mean 'setup'. All of the above distros use createrepo to
> > setup a repo.
> > 
> > or do you mean setup in the package mgmt software, sense?
> 
> I mean setup in the package mgmt software sense. As in setting up yum
> to pull from a repo. I'm wondering if it is in-scope for package kit
> to provide a backend-independent way of setting up the client side.

We provide UI to enable/disable already configured repos (ie, a .repo
file already exists), but we haven't come up with a good way to
add new repos, or do more than enable/disable the repos.

I don't think we want to just put up a UI where you can edit the
various fields that are allowed in a repo config.  As far as I know,
the three biggest use cases are:

o User installs an rpm that deploys a .repo file into /etc/yum.repos.d
  - This is pretty good.  The .repo file itself is managed by rpm.

o User downloads a repo file and saves it to /etc/yum.repos.d
  - This is ok, but the user has to save the file as root.  Maybe if
the repo had a mime type that firefox could recognize, and send the
file to PK to deal with?  I don't know if this is a common enough use
case, or something that we want to encourage.

o The sysadmin deploys .repo files to a bunch of systems using puppet,
or some other config management tool
  - This is fine, too.  PK lets you enable/disable these locally if
needed.

Actual use cases from actual users would be wonderful.

Here's a bug on the subject, please feel free to add your suggestions
and use cases:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=435626

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching