During the discussions for the release of openSUSE 12.3, the topic of update notifications and applets was brought up again. Originally openSUSE shipped with a custom update applet, but since it was basically unmaintained, the decision was made to switch to Apper for openSUSE 12.2
The original Apper used in that version had a number of issues, which the upstream developer (Daniel Nicoletti) fixed in a newer version, which also had a lot of other improvments. However we originally couldn’t switch because it depended on a newer, API-incompatible version of PackageKit, meaning that the PK bindings for libzypp (the heart of openSUSE’s package management) needed to be adjusted and ported.
So, for a while it was not clear on how to proceed, until at the recent hackathon, Stephan “coolo” Kulow ported the PK zypp backend to the newer PackageKit version. Once that issue was solved, the KDE team was able to update Apper to the latest version (0.8) and push it to the distribution. So openSUSE 12.3 (KDE) will make use of Apper as main method of notification for updates.
I would like to stress that Apper is not meant as a full blown replacement of YaST or zypper, but mainly as a way to handle distro and maintenance updates, integrated with the KDE Workspaces.
The Apper program is actually divided into two pieces: the main application itself and a plasmoid. We’ve been testing the plasmoid the past weeks and consensus is that it’s not yet ready to be pushed to users, so only the main application will get installed by default.
When you have new updates, an icon will pop in the system tray informing you:
Clicking on it will bring up the main interface, where you can review and select the updates:
Afterwards, the update process will start.
Of course, such an addition means that more testing is required, to ensure that outstanding bugs get fixed before the openSUSE 12.3 release. Therefore, if you are willing to test – jump aboard!
Hello,
i have a few questions:
1. Since we have PackageKit 0.8.7, will we also be able to do parallel download of packages?
2.And since we have Apper 0.8 will it be able to (finally) show only Applications as a search result (using the filters)?
3. And one last question: Apper allows notifications of the avalability of new distro Upgrades. Will we get a notification that a new version of OpenSuse is available also :D (as well as the possibility to Upgrade it via a GUI)?
sorry for making so many questions :)
Hi Random,
Let me see if I can answer your three questions:
1) PackageKit 0.8.7 has indeed the possibility of doing things in parallel, however this needs to be supported by the backend used. At this moment almost none of these backends are supporting these parallel features, but people are working on it. For openSUSE, the zypp-backend is being used and this one is definitely not supporting parallel activities. However the zypp maintainers are targeting a full rewrite of this backend allowing more actions to be done in parallel. (e.g. resolving the situation where PackageKit is blocking YaST/zypper). However there is no schedule yet when this new backend will be ready.
2) How do you mean to show only applications ? Filters in Apper are more focused on a package being Installed or Available. I don’t think much has been changed in this area. But did you ever reported this as a wish on bugs.kde.org ?
3) Well, I wonder how Apper would detect this. This would mean that it needs to get a kind of signal to change repositories to reflect the new distro version. If the repositories have been changed, then it will perform the download and installation of the packages. But if you are expecting that it will execute a fresh install of the new version, then I believe your expectations are too high. openSUSE most likely will not support this (as that zypper itself also doesn’t support it in this way). But who knows what the future will bring.
Raymond
hi,
thanks for your reply :D
about 1.: is there a place i can follow this development???
in 2. i was refering to what is discribed here: http://dantti.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/open-the-package-get-your-application – in another words: to hide packages and show only applications.
in 3. i was talking about something (not exactly but it would do the job) like what is discribed by someone here: https://features.opensuse.org/313441
thanks once again