Year: 2008

gtk-doc legend needed

I think I've included the right markup, but the current web documentation looks like rubbish.

I really can't convince gtk-doc to recognize that the signals are signals, or to pick up the markup and descriptions that I've so lovingly explained.

Any help really appreciated.

EDIT: Dan Winship to the rescue: it's because your object struct name doesn't have a “_” at the beginning of it ie, it has to be “typedef struct _PkClient PkClient”

A very stupid thing

I've just done something very stupid: I dropped my laptop.

It must have fell about 30cm onto soft carpet, and now the screen is broken in about 3 places. My excuse is that I've had a super long day at work, and I'm not feeling great, but I'm just so frustrated with myself.

I'm guessing a replacement screen ~= the price of a new laptop, and I just don't have that kind of money right now. Hence, I'll be offline until I can get hold of an external monitor, which, living in a flat the size of a shoebox, might be hard to find a home for.

In a few weeks I'll be starting at Red Hat, where they are buying me a nice work machine, but until then all major hacking will have to be paused.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH.

FOSDEM 2008

So another year, another great FOSDEM. On Sunday I presented an introduction to PackageKit. The slides are now online for any that missed it.

For those of you I met, it was great to see you. I was really worried I didn't get a chance to say hi to some key people, so if I didn't grab you and say thanks then I apologize, and I hope to shake your hand soon.

Big changes

Today I resigned from my graduate hardware engineer position at BAE Systems. In a little over one months time I will be starting at Red Hat UK, with Jonathan Blandford as my boss. I'll primarily be working on laptop support issues, but with a bit of time spent on PackageKit and other cool stuff. This is a great opportunity for me, and I'm really looking forward to solving new problems. Good news.

Service Packs and PackageKit

Microsoft Windows has the concept of service packs, i.e. a large package containing all the fixes to date. Service packs are really useful if a computer only has no (or slow) network connectivity and the whole system has to be updated on multiple computers.

I think some sort of PackageKit integration with a “service pack” type DVD/CD would be useful. Note, this concept is totally different to one click install, as it has a different perspective.

I think the ideal use case is this:

  • [1] insert CD/DVD/PenDrive with service pack .debs and .rpms on
  • [2a] cdrom is autorun by gnome-volume-manager and the location passed to gnome-packagekit to initiate a service pack update
  • [2b] gnome-packagekit watches for a cdrom to be inserted
  • [2c] packagekitd watches for a cdrom to be inserted and triggers a client side signal (means client doesn't have dep on libhal, and the daemon can Lock() the cd device from ejecting when the transaction starts)
  • [2d] gvfs does a new-fangled thing for autolaunch and tells gnome-packagekit
  • [3] gnome-packagekit asks the user to confirm it's valid update media, asks for PolicyKit auth and runs the ServicePack() backend method on the media device.

For [2] we'll need an identifier that can be recognized by PackageKit, maybe just the presence of the file packagekit-autostart.ini on the CDROM or DVD. The format of this file can be trivial, something like:

[PackageKit Autostart Section]
DataLocation=Fedora/updates/rpm
DistroName=Fedora8

For [3] we can make the ServicePack() method just do something like “yum local update /media/DiscFoo/Fedora/updates/rpm/*.rpm” (backend specific, and within yumBackend obviously).

Michael Vogt has already worked on add-on cds for Ubuntu, and I think there's some momentum for this for Fedora also. I really think this could rock.  I'm also after a better name than ServicePack, maybe UpdateMedia or UpdatePack might be better choices.

Comments?