[Synaptic-devel] Patch: add rpm-src-dir support + some ideas

[Panu Matilainen]

The attached patch adds support for rpm-src-dir to Synaptic (rpm-src-dir 
was just added upstream to apt-rpm). Not that there's any use for that in 
Synaptic but at least it knows what the dang thing is :)

Now on to the ideas which this just spurred up:

1) Strange/wild idea of adding *easy* support for local repositories: 
Think about a situation where a user has downloaded stuff from various 
places into ~/packages. How do you go installing those from Synaptic? You 
either figure out how to run genbasedir on that (or use rpm-dir on 
rpm-systems) and add to source lists. Not particularly user friendly...
I'm thinking of something like "find local repositories from this system" 
menu-entry/button in the repository setup window, which would search the 
local disk for things looking like repositories (for rpm-dir that's easy, 
anything RPMS.<foo> basically) and add those automatically to 
sources.list. Where rpm-dir can't be used that gets much more complicated 
(find suitable directories, run genbasedir, add to sources.list .. and 
keep on running genbasedir on that to keep it in sync at suitable 
points...) but maybe not impossible?

2) Would there be interest in getting Synaptic to support source retrieval 
and build-dep installation? Those obviously are of little interest for the 
average end user and maybe the average developer uses apt for that ... but 
then currently the average developer doesn't have a choice :)

3) Better integration with apt's Lua-interface would be welcome. Now only 
a few Lua-slots trigger when using Synaptic, making many scripts 
useless / almost-so, and reporting anything back to the user from even 
those that run is impossible, except for errors. Of course because of the 
vastly different natures of apt vs synaptic not everything is applicable 
to both worlds but having some means to communicate with scripts + maybe 
some added Lua-slots for synaptic specifically would open up interesting 
possibilities.. An example:
In fedora.us apt package all relevant GPG-signatures are automatically 
imported and all packages checked against those from an apt Lua-script. 
That sort of works since the relevant slots are in libapt-pkg but it'd be 
nice if we could ask the user on startup "You don't seem to have xxx 
GPG-key in your keyring, import now?" yes/no box appear.
Another example:
Somebody on apt-rpm list asked whether it's possible to use apt with a 
changing password (like SecurID) on http-proxy. With a tiny little 
Lua-script that's possible with apt but not synaptic (in fact, IIRC 
waiting on standard input from Lua hangs synaptic completely without any 
apparent reason).
As of how to actually implement this .. I don't know. Maybe some special 
yesno(), infomsg() etc additions to Lua which then perform appropriately 
depending on the environment (show dialog box in synaptic, stdin/out 
input/feedback in apt) would be possible?

That's it for my braindump of the day.. comments/thoughts?

        - Panu -

synaptic-rpmsrcdir.patch
Description: Text document