Hi, I've been with writing a GNOME frontend to libapt-pkg (ApplicationManager in GNOME cvs, though its shaky at the moment because I just ported it to GNOME2). The basic APIs for libapt-pkg are rather convoluted, but that's managable. However, probably because most people are using apt-get rather than a graphical apt, certain problems have cropped up that make a graphical apt more or less infeasible (certainely inconvenient).
1) A number of packages prompt for user input directly during configuration. This basically precludes use of a nice interface. Popping up a terminal box is not a serious solution. Things that use debconf work just fine of course. It would be nice to have policy that stipulated that direct prompting could not be done. 2) No feedback during the actual install process... Because although apt-pkg is library-afied, dpkg is not. It seems like dpkg should be split into libdpkg and a commandline frontend "dpkg". I'd be happy to do the work if I knew that the changes would actually get rolled in... But this also requires changes to libapt-pkg so you can get access to this information. Since this can be a long part of the process its a very serious usability problem. We also can't get adequate results about problems during install at the moment. Anyway, comments, suggestions, referrals appreciated :-) -Seth -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
