Re: [gentoo-soc] GSoC - Package statistics

[Brian Dolbec <brian.dolbec@gmail.com>]

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On Mon, 2011-03-21 at 22:22 -0500, chris@basementcode.com wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:51:58 -0700, Brian Dolbec 
>  <brian.dolbec@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2011-03-22 at 00:39 +0100, Michael Seifert wrote:
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> >>
> >> Hello Gentoo team,
> >>
> >> I am interested in taking part in this year's Google Summer of Code 
> >> and
> >> would like to discuss some general things. More specific, I am 
> >> talking
> >> about Christopher Harvey's idea to design an application that raises
> >> statistics on the installed packages on a system (see [1]).
> >>
> >> Let me explain my issue:
> >> In the first place, I am a Java developer and I consider my Java 
> >> skills
> >> to be quite well. The point is that java is not part of a minimal 
> >> gentoo
> >> system, whereas Python is. I would not have problems with Python, 
> >> but I
> >> would have to learn the API of a GUI toolkit (preferably PyQt).
> >> What is your opinion: Would you be okay with a Java application or 
> >> would
> >> you rather like to have a Python based one or even some other 
> >> language?
> >> And finally, how much time do you think will it cost to work through 
> >> the
> >> Qt API?
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Well, a good deal of the info gathering methods are already coded in
> > python (by me) and installed on many users systems already, soon to 
> > be
> > even more as gentoolkit-0.3.0 final is about to be released.
> >
> > Have a look at the analyse module.  It is designed for accessing the
> > installed package database and reporting/repairing things about it.
> > There is room for many more types of reports depending what is 
> > needed.
> > Adding an anonymous data upload should not be difficult.  So far I 
> > have
> > only been adding report types for problems users have run into.  It 
> > has
> > USE flags and keywords reports so far.  It has an api to use so as to
> > not need terminal output parsing to get the relevant data out of it.
> > Also so does most of equery and eclean have usable api's now (if 
> > there
> > is anything needed from there (the reason I got involved in 
> > gentoolkit
> > coding).
>  Glad to hear gentoolkit has an API.
> >
> > I don't think a gui would be needed, but rather webapp interfaces to 
> > the
> > data gathered.  Most of the devs are cli die hards, so a simple 
> > command
> > line interface to query the central database should be primary. I
> > believe it would be more widely used for the ebuilds they maintain. A
> > browser could be used to connect to it and get graphs, etc. for more
> > elaborate info displays.
>  I had envisioned the webapp as being the main frontend, but since users 
>  would probably feel more comfortable with entering useful data via a 
>  simple and minimal gui on the client side.

well, the only time a gui might be useful is selecting the responses to
pkg queries a dev my trigger to be asked.  All the info gathering could
be done in a cronjob, maybe once a week, month,... and possibly sent
automatically if that option is selected.  no user intervention or data
entry is needed after initial setup.

> >
> > I would think the main portion of this project would be the database 
> > and
> > webapp query tools.  Potential controversy aside, I would also think 
> > you
> > should add a mechanism for a dev to trigger a simple query for people
> > having a cat/pkg-ver installed to optionally fill in a few questions
> > regarding an pkg's stability,... all anonymously.  Those queries 
> > could
> > be generic in nature and come with the data gathering tool, that way
> > only a simple small string need be downloaded at the time of data 
> > upload
> > (for ex: pkgname, query #, possibly a bug #) no executable code.
>  Agreed, maybe to avoid making the program annoying it could only run 
>  when the user asks it to.

Yes the triggered queries would only put a notice to an email, or
systray icon,...  Answering them and sending would be when the user
selected only.
 
> >
> > So I would concentrate your research and proposal efforts on the
> > database and webapps.
> 
>  I'm not a developer, so I don't think I can mentor this project even 
>  though I had the original idea. As of now, as far as I know this project 
>  has no mentor. Brian, as the author of gentoolkit and having such 
>  similar ideas for this project as me I'd be happy to see you mentor it 
>  if you want to.
> 
>  -Chris

  Well, I would not be a good mentor for the webapp portion, since I
have not done any webapp programming outside of trying to tweak a couple
existing programs.  However for the user side of data collection, yes I
would take it on if the powers that be so choose.  I would still help if
asked even if not chosen as co-mentor. 

  Also being an official gentoo developer is not a pre-requisite to be a
mentor.  If you feel you have the qualifications for this task.  Get in
touch with dberkholz and antarus, the sooner the better for them to
evaluate you.


-- 
Brian Dolbec <brian.dolbec@gmail.com>

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