[maemo-developers] QA Process for non user/* packages and how Application Manager handles upgrades (was: Re: extras-devel -> extras-testing auto-promotion not working?)

[From: Anderson Lizardo]

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 6:09 AM, Thomas Perl <th.perl at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe a meta-package that depends on all new PyMaemo packages
> would do the trick? AFAIK there is a "user/hidden" section that lets the
> package appear in "upgrade" and "uninstall" views, but not in the normal
> "install" view. So users won't see it in the normal application list, but
> would have the option to remove or upgrade the package:
>
> http://maemo.gitorious.org/hildon-application-manager/mainline/commit/f7b4542b3c77114a95e2803708cec8eeff3409f7

As I said on a previous message this solves the "promote packages to
extras"  issue, but still doesn't solve:

* how to convince the user of installing this meta pacakge (does he
ever have to know about Python to install e.g. gPodder?)

* installing this metapackage will obviously install *all* PyMaemo
packages, which will take unnecessarily precious storage even if not
all packages are used.

* If I understood Mikko's explanation right, HAM will not upgrade a
dependency automatically (unlike "apt-get upgrade"), unless a
installed (or to be installed) user/* application exclicitely Depends
on that new version (i.e. uses "Depends: package (>= x.y)", where x.y
is the newer version). If that's correct, each new version of a
dependency that contains a important fix will require *all* Python
applications updating their versions to include the new required
version in debian/control, if we want the user to have that fix.

Mikko:  feel free to correct me if I made a mistake.

Regards,
-- 
Anderson Lizardo
OpenBossa Labs - INdT
Manaus - Brazil