> One question we have is how the new tools rug, zen-updater and zmd > compare to what we had before with YaST Online Update and > suseWatcher. We are interested in every feedback ranging from > architecture, design or used standards and their enhancements.
Going by http://files.opensuse.org/opensuse/en/7/78/Package-management-in-code10.png the YaST package management talks straight to libzypp rather than zmd, while rug and zen-updater etc talk to zmd. Presumably this is where the synchronisation issues come from. The package management seems far more reliable when using just rug with yum repositories avoiding the synchronisation. It seems clear the current situation with yast and zmd frontends working in different ways and synchronisation between them is not the way things should work. Presumably yast sw_single, YOU etc should become frontends to ZMD also. However, I am not sure whether this is possible, I have made my own frontend to ZMD and could not find a way to use the api from something other than mono (if there is please tell me :). The user interface for package management and updating is also possibly one of areas requiring most urgent attention as this is how many users judge SUSE's package management. The yast sw_single interface is starting to show its age when compared with tools such as Adept and Synaptic (not that these are perfect either) and there is a complete lack of progress bars in the most important of places. There are some very good ideas in a file /usr/share/doc/packages/yast2-packagemanager/pkg-sel-ideas.txt from ~2002 which presumably were never implemented. The current interface does not cope well with multiple online repositories, not to mention the lack of progress bars while downloading large quantities of data. This will get more important still when the build service is completed and something like http://software.opensuse.org/download/repositories/ will be used. As for updating this is something I think windows does right. I think there should be a notification applet for updates and the user should not have to worry about the mechanics of where the updates are coming from or what updates to select (unless He/She chooses to). Oh and having deltarpms back would be nice. Benjamin Weber --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
