PackageKit Demo UI

PackageKit now has an update applet and application installer. This demo-application will win no awards for UI design, but the idea is to show how easy it is to make an async frontend for the provided dbus interface.

Easy async abstracted installing…

Also, the trivial update icon runs once per active session, and communicates with a single system instance of PackageKit. When the service is needed it is activated using dbus system activation, and when it's doing nothing the system daemon quits.

There are updates available….

This means we can queue multi-session updates and installs. For instance I can start an update in my user session, switch to my girlfriends session, and then search for pidgin, and queue the install. The install will start when my update has completed. Maybe a more useful situation would be for the gdm login to start doing the daily updates before a user even logs in. OpenOffice could install language packs in the background as soon as you start typing in a new language. Lots of fun stuff.

Of course very little of this actually works properly. The dummy backend does mostly the right thing, and the apt and yum backends can search, but I still need to do the rest of the actions. The PolicyKit bit is still to be done.

So, good things.

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hughsie

Richard has over 10 years of experience developing open source software. He is the maintainer of GNOME Software, PackageKit, GNOME Packagekit, GNOME Power Manager, GNOME Color Manager, colord, and UPower and also contributes to many other projects and opensource standards. Richard has three main areas of interest on the free desktop, color management, package management, and power management. Richard graduated a few years ago from the University of Surrey with a Masters in Electronics Engineering. He now works for Red Hat in the desktop group, and also manages a company selling open source calibration equipment. Richard's outside interests include taking photos and eating good food.

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