Re: [Synaptic-devel] Upgrading KDE packages

[Sebastian Heinlein]

Am Do, den 15.04.2004 schrieb Guillaume Pratte um 5:08:

> That's true, but I am one of these Debian power-users that run on a mixed 
> testing/unstable environment and that usually only upgrade packages when an 
> new upstream version is available, not only when there is a typo in the 
> installation script corrected and a -2 version is made available.
> 
> So, in short, I like to control what I upgrade. Always dist-upgrading to 
> testing would take too much bandwith. Also, I selectively take some packages 
> from unstable (like KDE), but I don't trust unstable as a whole -- thus I 
> would fear doing an apt-get dist-upgrade on unstable just to get the latest 
> KDE...

Unstable is quite usable these days - perhaps more than a mixed setup.
You can also use apt-listbugs to avoid installing packages with critical
bugs.

> Honestly, speaking for myself, I usually don't read manuals. I really think 
> that the user interface should be "self documented".

Yeah, I know that documentation is not used to get familiar with the
application by the most users, but it has its raison d'être if the user
stucks. That is why you should follow a basic approach that concentrates
on problems in writing manuals.

You are referring to an advanced function - and you always have to find
the balance between providing adv. functions and not overcrowding the
interface. And you can never satisfy both advanced and normal users to
100 percent.

> It's just that I had this task "Upgrade the whole KDE" in mind, and that 
> mapping this task into "Let's create a filter to only show all KDE package 
> that can be updated" did not occur to me at first.

The interface of synaptic is object centric and not task based. Perhaps
this is a point for improvement: I think that the new interface with the
browser makes the availability of filtering the package list more
visible.

> The filter dialog is not really confusing. There is some room for 
> ameliorations (isn't there always room for ameliorations? :-), but overall, 
> it works well.

It would be nice to know what you mean. Nobody will kill you :)

> But about the "Upgrade all KDE package" task, the one problem is that the 
> debian "KDE" category does not contains all KDE packages... For instance, the 
> kmail package is in the "Email" category, not in the KDE one...

Another possibility would be to use the "reverse dependencies" filter.
You could only show packages, that depend on "kdelibs4".

But that does not work very well :( So additional work to do for Michael
and Gustavo! :)

Regards,

Sebastian