Re: A GNU Distribution

[Brandon Invergo]

> With regards to the GUI, I did something of partly overlapping scope
> in the past with the sourceinstall project;
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/software/sourceinstall/
> 

There does seem to be a lot of overlap in functionality there, though
the backend looks like it functions quite differently. How does one use
it? Is the source downloaded manually by the user and then installed via
the software? Or can the program search some repository of available
software packages and automate the downloading and unpacking?


> I understand that what is needed needs to be more scriptable, and in that 
> sense,
> maybe a bash glue should be built first (by someone who understands
> the underlying tools better),
> and then I could rewrite/reuse/repurpose the GTK GUI to work on top of
> either that glue script
> or be an alternative, graphical implementation of the glue script.
> 
> So if you have something concrete below to rely on, I can do the more
> or less "dumb" GUI work.

I agree that the Bash glue code should be written first, at the very
least in order to prototype the full package management process. I have
a decent amount of experience with GTK but mostly in Python. I can hack
together at least an initial version fairly quickly. At the moment,
though, much of my time is dedicated to bringing the GSRC repository of
Makefiles up-to-date (it went unmaintained for some time).

As an alternative, there is PackageKit [1] (GPLv2) for which Gnome
already has a front-end [2]. It would just be a matter of building a
back-end to the package management system we develop via PackageKit's
so-called "Spawned Backend" system [3]. This spawned backend could be
written in, say, Bash and act as the "Bash glue script" that we've
previously mentioned, making calls to GSRC, Stow, etc as needed. The
user would only need to either use the Gnome GUI frontend or
PackageKit's commandline tool [4] to manage software. The package
management system that we write doesn't need to implement all of the
functionality covered by the PK software; our backend would "advertise"
the functionality that it covers to PK, and PK would adjust the
front-ends to accomodate the functionality that exists while hiding any
functionality that we don't provide.

Regards,
Brandon


[1] http://www.packagekit.org
[2] http://www.packagekit.org/pk-screenshots.html#gnome
[3] http://www.packagekit.org/gtk-doc/backend-spawn.html
[4] http://www.packagekit.org/pk-using.html