Re: gnome-apt
Hi,
; 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.
Sorry about that. I guess it's been too long since I read that list.
; 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.
Perhaps it's worht separating the update into two steps? The download
and the apply? I tis a nuisance not to be able to use the program for
half an hour...
; 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.
Similarly here, except that the division already exists --- there's a
long download into cache, then a (relatively) short installation which
hogs vast amounts of memory.
; 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.
Yeah. I guess it's a general database problem --- whether to go to
elaborate lengths to make transactions small (atomic) or not.
; 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.
No, it was just the two big ones I noticed.
; > * 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.
Okay. I have to admit, I never gained any clear idea of what state a
package was in. My system is sort of atypical now since almost
everything that is installed is held, so that I can stick with frozen
while trying a few toys from unstable. I'd really like to be able to
pick which distribution to track for each package. So I eagerly await
future versions of gnome-apt. I only wish I had ability and time to
contribute code.
Thanks for your time,
Andrew Archibald
aarchiba@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
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