[gentoo-dev] [gsoc-status] portage backend for PackageKit

[Mounir Lamouri <volkmar@gentoo.org>]

Hi,

I'm working on a portage backend for PackageKit [1].

As I did not really present my project, you have to know PackageKit is
an universal (distribution-wide) package manager. To do so, every
package manager which wants to work with PackageKit have to follow an api.

PackageKit is compatible with a lot of package managers. Actually, it's
the default one in Fedora and some other distributions.
The main advantage of using PackageKit is to have a simple application
working in most distributions. It will be a great advantage to make
Gentoo more user-friendly. With a USE-flag GUI manager, it could be
really great.

The main difficulties for this project is the source-based aspect of
Gentoo and the verbosity of portage. I mean even if PackageKit is
designed to fit every needs, portage backend is the first source-based
distribution backend and we will have to adapt some things. In addition,
some information provided by portage like ewarn and elog messages and
new configuration files have to be prompted even when using PackageKit.

So, where are we right now ?
The planning says "every basic features should be done June 15th".
Actually, I still have to do 2 features : list update candidates and do
update. Every other basic features (install, remove, sync, details, dep,
reverse-dep, groups, ...) have been done.
To my defense, that's three days I'm sick.
In addition, as PackageKit refuses interactivity, I've pushed
ACCEPT_LICENSE default value to remove interactivity from ebuilds using
check_license function from eutils eclass.

What's going to be done right now ?
Repositories management have to be added. With zmedico, we were talking
about doing this directly in the portage api. Basically, it will be
merging layman into portage. It's not 100% sure right now but probable.
Beginning the hard work of messages management and bug fixes.

I will try, to add needed ebuilds in the tree this week to let people
test PackageKit on Gentoo as it will be "usable" even if not recommended
yet. That's what we call an alpha version I think ;)

[1] http://packagekit.org/

Thanks,
Mounir