jmr wrote:
From the Package Manager standpoint in this scheme:
Users will either use pre configured Publishers on their system and
add Publishers to their system via:
- Clicking on a .p5i file
- Using File->Add Publisher which just takes a Publisher URI
In the last two instances, we are assuming if Trust information is to
be surfaced for a given Publisher we will prompt the user to ask they
if they want to Trust this Publisher and add it to their list of
Trusted Publishers, which means they then trust all streams from that
Publisher. We will need API support for all of this which is yet to be
designed so I will park that for now.
Once a user has a Publisher on the system they can then install
packages from its streams:
- In the Main PM View (what you see when PM is launched) we currently
list Publishers in a drop down combo, this would need to list
Publisher-Streams, which users can choose to search/ browse.
I think this approach is fundamentally broken (see below) but I don't
think that's new news.
- In Manage Publishers we would need to figure out how to let users
interact with a given Publisher, its Streams (choosing which stream to
use from an incompatible set), which streams are active and for each
stream the ability to access its underlying repository information to
allow things such as the manual addition of mirrors. We'd also need to
allow for nested streams. All of this needs to be designed, but for
the most part users should not have to go anywhere near Manage
Publishers to have their system functioning with a reasonable set of
Publisher-Stream defaults, all defined by the initial Publisher
payload fetched when the Publisher is first added.
I totally agree that the average user who only wants to be on release
should ever need to go near the manage publishers at all.
We currently allow users to search on a single Publisher or All
Publishers, which in this new model would be a single Publisher-Stream
and All Publishers.
I would imagine we'd eventually want to allow a search across "all
streams of all publishers", "all active streams of all publishers", "all
active streams of a publisher", "a single (or possibly a subet of)
stream(s) from a publisher". Of course, search will need to be augmented
to support that.
With regard to user feedback, given the confusion that users seemed to
have with Publisher, I am not sure how they will cope with
Publisher-Streams and would favor just referring to this
Publisher-Stream couplet in the Main PM View as a Package Source which
clearly describes what they are.
My impression is that there's a strong desire to maintain coherent
terminology between the client and the gui. I'm not sure why you'd be
showing them the couplet at all. Again, you shouldn't be showing them a
selection of publishers to browse among at all (but I think we've
covered this over and over...). In any case, I would imagine you'd
select a publisher, and then could select from among its active streams
(if there's more than one). I believe the current problem with publisher
is that we can't give a simple one sentence explanation of what it is,
and our explanation currently gets tied up with the concepts of streams
and repos. Once we fix that, it should be easy to place a simple tooltip
or help bubble for publisher wherever it appears in the GUI since we'll
now have a simple and coherent explanation.
Brock
As I'm off for a few weeks I will need to drop of this discussion, but
look forward to seeing what turns up over the next few week.
JR
[snip]
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