[Mageia-dev] RPM features/issues/wishlist

[Liam R E Quin]

> The thing about packagekit, well most graphical frontends package
> management (pm) is that they dont really need to be that functional.
> By that I mean that yes it is great to be able to query nearly all of
> urpmi's features in rpmdrake, however, isn't it much faster to just do
> urpmf --files file-name.


The people most likely to use a graphical program like rpmdrake are
probably not so comfortable typing cryptic and distribution-specific
shell commands!

>  I guess what I am getting at is that as long
> as basic functionality, eg searching, add/remove and repo
> configurations are handled by the pm and done properly, ie not causing
> any breakage, then I feel that it is fair enough to say that more
> advanced functions should be done on the cl, firstly because that way
> is easier, secondly because that way encourages less breakage from
> just point and click and see.

The right answer is that point-and-click-and-see should not break
things.

Years ago I used to recommend Mandrake Linux when I spoke at
conferences, and one reason was that the admin tools had a log that
showed you what commands were being run, and, if you ran the commands
yourself, the same thing would happen. So it was a way for people to
learn.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/