[gobolinux-users] Package Manager

[kenneth marken]

Michael Homer wrote:
> On 4/8/07, Jeremy Visser <jeremy.visser at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 4/8/07, Jonas Karlsson <jonka750 at student.liu.se> wrote:
>>> Manager doesn't install dependencies by design, but I know that this fact
>>> isn't very obvious
>>> Either we should redesign Manager, perhaps make it use Freshen, or state
>>> clear that Manager shouldn't be used for system updates.
>> Blimey, I didn't know that. No wonder I broke my system every few
>> hours. I was sort of under the impression that it would be like a
>> Synaptic for Gobo. (Synaptic handles dependencies well.)
> Synaptic is just a wrapper around apt-get, which would be similar to
> making Manager use Freshen behind the scenes. I will add a batch mode
> to Freshen suitable to be used like that, or Manager could have it
> built in. Either way, it'll be post-014 since we're in feature freeze.
> 

the unix way would be for manager to be a gui wrapper, like synaptic, 
around the gobo cli tools. that way one avoids duplication of effort and 
bugs. or for that matter bugs that happen in one program and not in 
another doing the same kind of task.

> 
> The issue is not that Manager doesn't work; it works perfectly well.
> It does not perform dependency resolution or ordering by design, since
> it's not intended to do that. That could certainly be made clearer,
> though.

i fear that no matter how clear its made, people will expect it, at 
least when comming from other distros, to do just that. handle 
dependencies and all that.

so maybe one should question the usefulness of having manager in the 
distro until it can do said tasks. as of now it may well cause more 
usage related help requests then is needed.

sadly, while choice is good, it also confuse the users. even more so 
when it appear that all choices will perform the expected task, but one 
will, possibly silently, fail...