Bug#705692: transition: packagekit

[Matthias Klumpp <mak@debian.org>]

2013/6/26 Julien Cristau <jcristau@debian.org>:
> On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 17:51:28 +0200, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
>
>> Package: release.debian.org
>> Severity: normal
>> User: release.debian.org@packages.debian.org
>> Usertags: transition
>>
>> I would like to request a transition to PackageKit 0.8.x
>> The original source package of PackageKit contained two libraries,
>> libpackagekit-glib2 and libpackagekit-qt2, with the new 0.8.x release, the Qt
>> version was split out to a separate source package.
>
> What happened to python-packagekit?  python-aptdaemon.pkcompat and
> python-packagekit-gtk depend on it, but it seems it's no longer being
> built.
Uh... That is a bad situation which I forgot about (forgot that Debian
also ships that compat layer, and not only Ubuntu).
The package in question makes Aptdaemon act as PackageKit by providing
it's internal interfaces. Of course, these interfaces weren't designed
to be shared. PackageKit 0.8.x is now available for more than a year,
and Aptdaemon still hasn't catched up, although it's author recently
said that the backend is now almost complete.
PK provides python3-packagekit now, but this Python stuff should only
be used by PackageKit backends, and not to access PK itself (for that
case, we have the GIR package). But even if I would provide a
python-packgekit package again and satisfy the dependency of Aptd, the
package wouldn't be usefull (it would fail to communicate with the PK
daemon).
So, we would have these options at time:
 1) Remove the compat-layer - aptdaemon will remain functional, and
the PK dependency will be eliminated
 2) Wait for the PK 0.8.x support to be completed upstream

I will ask the maintainer for his oppinion. I would prefer option #2
at time. But nothing uses the Aptd compat-layer in Debian at the
moment, so not having it wouldn't hurt. (Ubuntu, however, uses itstead
of PackageKit, which is the reason why they are stuck on an older
release and need to patch upstream software)
I will write a follow-up as soon as I have more information. Sorry for
missing this detail.
Cheers,
    Matthias