[Mageia-discuss] a cross-distribution meeting about software installers

[andre999]

Remy CLOUARD a écrit :
> On Sat, Jan 08, 2011 at 11:16:00PM +0100, Samuel Verschelde wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Vincent Untz from Novell, who works on openSuse, invited us (and contributers
>> from other distributions, including Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu) to participate
>> in a meeting about software installers and the end-user experience.
>>
>> Here is how Vincent presents the project :
>>
>> ----- Quote -----
>> *** Goals ***
>>
>> Blue-sky goals:
>>      * agree on a common UI to install applications
>>      * agree on what metadata to use, how to generate it, where to host it
>>      * agree on a protocol to use to provide non-static metadata (featured
>> apps, ratings, comments, etc.)
>>      * decide what metadata can be shared between distros, and what should stay
>> distro-specific (eg: do we want user comments to be shared?)
>>
>> In reality, if it turns out we can't all agree on one item, it's still fine: it
>> doesn't mean we can't collaborate on the other items. And some distros might
>> still work together.
>>
>> It's worth mentioning here that what matters to us is the end-user experience.
>> It matters more than the technical implementation.
>>
>> *** Background ***
>>
>> Nearly all distributions are slowly moving towards making it easier to deal
>> with applications, and get information about those. The Ubuntu Software Center
>> is a good example of work being done here.
>>
>> At the moment, many of us are working in our own corners, while we could
>> certainly all move much faster if we worked together, especially since we're
>> all targetting mostly the same result.
>>
>> We do want content to be provided not just by us, distributors, but also by
>> the users: their experience with an application can inspire other users to
>> install it too.
>> The goals of this meeting is to see what can be put in common and harmonized
>> between various distributions, from the end-user point of view.
>> ----- End of quote -----
>>
>> The meeting will occur in Nürnberg, Germany from January 19th to 21st
>>
>> We don't know yet what the outcome of this 3-days meeting will be, but it may
>> be a great opportunity.
>>
>> For the mageia side, the participants will be :
>> - Michael Scherer (misc)
>> - Olivier Thauvin (Nanar), author of Sophie, the cross-distribution RPM
>> database,
>> - Samuel Verschelde (Stormi), for the mageia-app-db project.
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Samuel Verschelde
> Great !
>
> This sounds like a very good idea, such a move would be great to improve
> interaction between distributions and divide the needed effort to
> produce for each distribution.
>
> As far as I’m concerned, I’m sorry the schedule is a bit too tight for
> me, I won’t be able to attend this meeting. Besides, the cost of the
> ticket won’t make it possible either.
>
> I’m eager to know what will come out of this meeting, have a good trip !
> :-)
>
> Regards,

I really interested in that too. (But likewise can't attend.)

Have you noticed the Mancoosi project ?
It's an experimental international project to develop means of making 
software installation, and rolling back to the previous state in case of 
problems, fail-proof.
They're even exploring allowing installation with ordinary user 
privileges. (By considerable redundancy.)
(The downside seems that it would use a lot more disk space.)

see www.mancoosi.org + blog.mancoosi.org
It might be useful to review before your meeting.

And be sure to take notes, to let us in on the discussions :)

Regards