[maemo-developers] Application manager category view proposals

[From: Ryan Abel]

On Oct 28, 2008, at 10:30 AM, Marius Vollmer wrote:

> "ext Andrew Flegg" <andrew at bleb.org> writes:
>
>> On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Ryan Abel <rabelg5 at gmail.com>  
>> wrote:
>>>
>> [forcing packages to comply with the "definitive" package list]
>>>
>>> The reason I like doing this Application Manager-side is that it  
>>> forces
>>> compliance even for stuff not going through the autobuilder or  
>>> Extras. This
>>> prevents both Nokia and 3rd party repositories from being evil and
>>> corrupting the category view.
>>
>> Indeed, that's a very strong argument for it.
>
> Okay, let's do it then! :)
>
>> Having thought about it a bit more, I think there are 3 realistic  
>> scenarios:
>>
>>    1) Force the Application Manager to do it, based on a simple rule
>>       like having an i18n label defined.
>
> This is clever!  Too clever?  We could start with this: I could quite
> easily add a setting that enables this behavior.  Should it be on or  
> off
> by default?

Jaffa made the relevant point on IRC (by the way, where've you been,  
mvo? :() that option 3 is probably overengineering it a bit, and that  
simply letting the Application Manager have an internal list is really  
all we need.

Honestly, how often are we really going to want to modify that list?  
It'd be wise to wait for i18n if we do add sections, anyway, so  
waiting for the next SSU push wont kill anybody.

>>    3) Force the Application Manager to do it, sourcing the metadata
>>       from *.maemo.org
>
> This is a bit harder since we would need to tell apt-get about this  
> new
> metadata, and new infrastructure needs to be invented to maintain the
> metadata in the repository itself.

Reevaluating my idea, while it's probably a workable idea, the reality  
it it's really rather pointless. There's not gonna be enough list  
modification (it's hardly worth having an authoritative list if it  
changes every month), so implementing a solution to let us modify it  
easily seems rather pointless.

> Also, which of the many repositories should provide the list of
> categories?  Only maemo Extras?  Each repo for its own packages?  A
> union of all categories from all repositories?


If we did decide to go ahead with this method, I'd say keep the list  
on repository.maemo.org, but not necessarily in any particular  
repository.

--
Ryan Abel
Maemo Community Council chair