Re: gnome-apt

[Havoc Pennington <hp@Mcs.Net>]

Thanks for the report, most are already on the TODO list... I'll address
these though. I hope it's OK to CC the apt mailing list, it helps me keep
track of things and avoid duplicate reports.

On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Andrew Archibald wrote:
> 
> * You can't run gnome-apt as non-root.  I've been using dselect as a
>   way to tell what's installed and whether it's worth su'ing to run an
>   upgrade. 
>

On the list. It's basically a libapt-pkg issue, gnome-apt itself doesn't
care. The problem is that the Apt library tries to write files only root
can access. You can run it as a normal user if the normal user has access
to all the Apt files, but of course you normally wouldn't set things up
that way. 

For now I'd suggest sudo, eventually Jason may add a "read-only" mode to
the library so that you'll need only read access to the files. 
 
> * Dialogs are modal.  This is irritating and generally frowned upon by
>   UI gurus,  Especially when updates take a long time (half an hour,
>   say) it would be nice to manipulate the package state in the
>   meantime.  Downloads, too.

Unlike most apps, there is actually a good reason why those dialogs are
modal. Apt maintains a cache of package state and desired package state.
When you update, the cache is reset. So doing things while you update
would do you no good, all your settings would be nuked. Also, Gtk is very
sluggish during the update because the app is not multithreaded. So you
wouldn't want to use it anyway.

The other major modal dialog series is for Compelete Run; changing things
during complete run would be very bad, there would be all sorts of race
conditions.  That's why those are modal. 

Notice that dpkg and apt-get are both "modal" in that you can only run one
instance of them at a time. This is the same thing.

A few more minor dialogs that require interaction are modal, those could
eventually be fixed but there are only one or two of them I think.
Actually I can't think of one right now.

Aside from Update/Complete Run -associated dialogs they should be
non-modal. e.g. the error dialogs aren't, preferences aren't, search
isn't (I don't think, I know the results window isn't).

>   Especially irritating was when a little
>   dialog box popped itself up and grabbed keyboard focus away from
>   this email. 
> 

This is your window manager's fault (and for all wm's I've used happens
regardless of modality), gnome-apt has no control over focus.

> * Display is confusing.  I can't easily guess where a package will
>   be.  Alphabetical organization is clear enough, but the status
>   categories are unclear.  Things seem to only go into two categories,
>   not held/unheld/uninstalled.  I have trouble telling which state a
>   package is in or what to click on to change it. 
> 

I'm working on making this more clear. There is no Hold a la dselect; Kept
is different, reflecting merely the current state rather than a
restriction on future states.

> * Packages don't seem to be properly classified --- virtually
>   everything seems to have been tossed in "kept".
> 

This is correct behavior; when you launch the app things will be either
kept or not installed at all. You can manually upgrade/install packages,
or use the magic Mark Upgrades menu item.

> * Double-clicks on the "+" keep surprising me.  I keep single-clicking
>   and expecting it to work. 
>

On the list.
 
> * The details window is always too narrow so the text gets wrapped
>   unpleasantly and is hard to read.  A vertical division would be
>   clearer. 
> 

On the list.

> I hope this doesn't sound too negative --- I'm looking forward to a
> good alternative to dselect, and gnome-apt looks promising.
> 

No problem, I'm well aware it has a lot of issues remaining.

Thanks,
Havoc