Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:13:38PM +1000, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > JFYI. > > Debian has been represented at the meeting by Enrico Zini (who has > blogged about various aspects of the meeting as well [1,2,3]) and David > Kalnischkies. In the end, quite some pieces of Debian technologies have > attracted interest and are on their way to be part of the proposed > solution. Well done! It might also be interesting to note that Vincent Untz is planned to do a talk at the next FOSDEM about this meeting: http://www.fosdem.org/2011/schedule/event/distro_example -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110131100027.gb1...@celtic.nixsys.be
Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
On 01/27/2011 06:07 PM, David Kalnischkies wrote: I am thinking of the AppStream project therefore as a big experiment to work together and I have the strong hope that we can find more places where we can work on together instead of against each other. Agreed. And if you see we were able to come up with lot of agreements without falling in the typical two Linux traps: - talking about packaging - talking about GUI toolkits or desktop environments We are focusing in the user and the simple problem of finding a cool app and install it. We are using PackageKit to solve technical issues in the current reality of Linux, but if the user gets the software as a Chrome extension or a full self contained image, he will not care, and we will slowly open our minds and leave more and more dogmas out to fulfill this goal. Duncan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d443175.2050...@suse.de
Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
(keeling only lists CC'ed) Quoting Andreas Tille (andr...@an3as.eu): > What I'm missing in the summary and what was probably not discussed is > another user oriented service: ddtp.debian.net. Translating > descriptions of packages^Wapplications is IMHO quite important to do the > last final step to complete world domination. As I know from some > discussion on debian-i18n list[1] DDTSS is severely broken and needs > definitely some love. Some effort to put it under DSA control is > somehow stalled and the technique behind needs some more love by a > gifted and dedicated programmer. Please do not forget: Those users who > say "I want to draw vector graphics." will say it in their mother tongue > and we geeks to frequently forget that this is not necessarily English. > The availability of translated descriptions is IMHO crucial for the > success of the App-Intaller attempt. The DDTP project is quite there > where we need to go but it needs more love. This is not forgotten. I still want to organize a work session dedicated on bringing the system that hosts ddtp.debian.net under Debian System Admins control. The point being of course to guarantee those people who work to translate package descriptions a *reliable* framework for doing their work. This is currently what's missing: - the machine hosting the system is administered by only 3 people, out of which 2 (the most skilled ones!) have less and less free time for this - we need a few more people able to deal with the code of the package description system. Currently, the core of the DDTP is managed by only one person and the web interface by another one. And both of them are indeed the only people able to really fix things Despite all these weaknesses, Debian translators have been able to do a very significant work on translating package descriptions, which is of course a great achievement. And this, despite not having a "very cool and easy to use" user interface such as Pootle, Rosetta or Transifex. Definitely, package descriptions translations is something that can be cross-distros: just replace "package" by "application" and you get the point. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
[David Kalnischkies] > Thats another usecase of package name matching: "look at how debian > describes the 'same' package compared to fedora." I've been testing one approach to this the last few days, using the Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) dictionary, http://cpe.mitre.org/ >. I use it to look up CVEs for the locally maintained software here at the university, but CPEs could also be used to compare the package sets between distributions. RHEL got their own CVE -> CPE information availalbe from https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt >. Perhaps Fedora got something similar? If all distributions registered their packages with CPE info, it would be trivial to map packages between distributions, and also a lot easier to track security issues in packages. :) My dream would be for every package to have their CPE ID in the package, perhaps in debian/control using "Xs-CPE: " or similar, to allow cross-distro mapping of packages and make the security teams work easier. :) I've started on a package map from Debian source package to CPE ID in the testing security team svn, data/CPE/list. I now got 815 entries in the list. Happy hacking, -- Petter Reinholdtsen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/2flvd1aryqg@login1.uio.no
Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 13:45, Andreas Tille wrote: > On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:55:36PM +0100, David Kalnischkies wrote: >> If I remember correctly, DDTP got a short mention and the result was: >> "Wow, debian really has translations for package descriptions?!?" >> Other distributions seem to have only failed (=very outdated) tries if any. > > IMHO this does show two things: > 1. Debian is cool (people here know this). ;-) > 2. Debian fails to communicate this coolness. :-( Unfortunately yes, debtags got a similar reaction and screenshots wasn't the best known thing either, but what this really shows is that we all fail big-time in communication across distros as I for example personally didn't know a single bit about zypper and the underlying sat-solver or to be fair just a bit more than nothing about the rpm world in general. Debian has a relatively good communication with derivates (thanks front-desk) but between deb and rpm world¹ is a pretty big gulf and on each side we (re)invent the wheel as its hard enough to communicate about your cool new $something in your own world, the "aliens" are even harder to app-roach… ¹ don't even thing of 'world of gentoo' or arch or one of the others now… I am thinking of the AppStream project therefore as a big experiment to work together and I have the strong hope that we can find more places where we can work on together instead of against each other. >> AppStream focuses on translations of the name, keywords and (short) >> summary managed by upstream. We talked shortly about longer descriptions >> (possibly with markdown) but this would easily blow up the currently >> rather small app-data.xml similar to how the long descriptions are quiet >> a big part of our Packages files currently - beside the problem: Who will >> write these descriptions: Upstream is not necessarily the best author… > > The question is: What is a "short" summary. From my packaging Approximation: It is our first line of the long description - at least that is how it is called in rpm world as they have a difference between summary and (long) description. There are btw many ambitions resulting from the gulf as we developed different names for essential the same thing (sections, recommends)… > For the content itself: I agree that upstream is not necessarily the > best author but I assume that maintainers in other dists are doing it > quite similar to waht we do in Debian: Revise a text from upstream or > try to invent one. So the descriptions are there - we just need to > define what a "good" (short) description is (there are bad examples > as well[2]) Thats another usecase of package name matching: "look at how debian describes the 'same' package compared to fedora." Sharing is maybe difficult as some descriptions mention alternatives and/or comparisons to other packages in the archive which is at least inconvenient if the mentioned program isn't packaged for $your-distro. Another thing is the rationality for suggesting an other package. E.g.: To play this foo game on lan with your friends you need to install the foo-lanserver on debian while mandriva ships both bundled… Best regards David Kalnischkies P.S.: A LOT of mails regarding descriptions were send only to the distributi...@l.fd.o list, so we might proceed in talking there. (beware: not subscribers are moderated which is kind of awkward, but heh, I don't make the rules…) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/AANLkTi=tnLi7W2m4J7KMPJ5yGPmkhqZ8c2m6Cz2B=l...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:11:06 +0100, Michael Vogt wrote: > [...] >> AppStream focuses on translations of the name, keywords and (short) >> summary managed by upstream. We talked shortly about longer descriptions >> (possibly with markdown) but this would easily blow up the currently >> rather small app-data.xml similar to how the long descriptions are quiet >> a big part of our Packages files currently - beside the problem: Who will >> write these descriptions: Upstream is not necessarily the best author… > [..] > > When we take this from the desktop file, there is already i18n > infrastructure for this. It will get imported into the pot file and > the translations are merged into the desktop file. We just need to > grab it from it. The problem of blowing up the data is indeed there, > especially if we add long descriptions. In the long run it may be > needed that we split similar to the Translations-$lang data. > > But I'm not sure if we want long descriptions in the > app-data.xml. Given that we have (long) package descriptions already, > it may make more sense to provide translations for those. Agree. If we take (translated) package descriptions as long applications description, will it be possible to include them in the Xapian search? Cause maybe the term an user is searching for is only mentioned in the long package description, so the search-results will become better if the long descriptions are in the database. (PackageKit is really slow in querying this kind of data...) IMHO long descriptions written by package maintainers are better than descriptions written by upstream. (Maintainers are a little more objective than upstream and can easily write down the most important facts about an application, while upstream descriptions *might* become very long and advertising) Kind regards, Matthias -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/9cb6d1ff4effad8cba3e7b24e9ee8...@mb8-2.1blu.de
Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
Hi! Am 27.01.2011 13:45, schrieb Andreas Tille: >> If I remember correctly, DDTP got a short mention and the result was: >> "Wow, debian really has translations for package descriptions?!?" >> Other distributions seem to have only failed (=very outdated) tries if any. > > IMHO this does show two things: > 1. Debian is cool (people here know this). ;-) > 2. Debian fails to communicate this coolness. :-( FWIW: It will be mentioned in the next issue of the Debian Project News. Feel free to review it: svn+ssh://svn.alioth.debian.org/svn/publicity/dpn/en/current/index.wml Best regards, Alexander -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4d4172c3.8080...@schmehl.info
Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
B1;2703;0cOn Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:55:36PM +0100, David Kalnischkies wrote: > On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:26, Andreas Tille wrote: > > What I'm missing in the summary and what was probably not discussed is > > another user oriented service: ddtp.debian.net. Translating > > descriptions of packages^Wapplications is IMHO quite important to do the > > last final step to complete world domination. As I know from some > > discussion on debian-i18n list[1] DDTSS is severely broken and needs > > definitely some love. Some effort to put it under DSA control is > > somehow stalled and the technique behind needs some more love by a > > gifted and dedicated programmer. Please do not forget: Those users who > > say "I want to draw vector graphics." will say it in their mother tongue > > and we geeks to frequently forget that this is not necessarily English. > > The availability of translated descriptions is IMHO crucial for the > > success of the App-Intaller attempt. The DDTP project is quite there > > where we need to go but it needs more love. > > If I remember correctly, DDTP got a short mention and the result was: > "Wow, debian really has translations for package descriptions?!?" > Other distributions seem to have only failed (=very outdated) tries if any. Indeed, while we talked briefly about it. It got lost in all the other topcis we discussed later, but I think its indeed a import part of the whole system. Probably more something to fix at the distro level as its useful independant of the app context. > AppStream focuses on translations of the name, keywords and (short) > summary managed by upstream. We talked shortly about longer descriptions > (possibly with markdown) but this would easily blow up the currently > rather small app-data.xml similar to how the long descriptions are quiet > a big part of our Packages files currently - beside the problem: Who will > write these descriptions: Upstream is not necessarily the best author… [..] When we take this from the desktop file, there is already i18n infrastructure for this. It will get imported into the pot file and the translations are merged into the desktop file. We just need to grab it from it. The problem of blowing up the data is indeed there, especially if we add long descriptions. In the long run it may be needed that we split similar to the Translations-$lang data. But I'm not sure if we want long descriptions in the app-data.xml. Given that we have (long) package descriptions already, it may make more sense to provide translations for those. Cheers, Michael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110127131106.GF2547@bod
Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:55:36PM +0100, David Kalnischkies wrote: > If I remember correctly, DDTP got a short mention and the result was: > "Wow, debian really has translations for package descriptions?!?" > Other distributions seem to have only failed (=very outdated) tries if any. IMHO this does show two things: 1. Debian is cool (people here know this). ;-) 2. Debian fails to communicate this coolness. :-( > AppStream focuses on translations of the name, keywords and (short) > summary managed by upstream. We talked shortly about longer descriptions > (possibly with markdown) but this would easily blow up the currently > rather small app-data.xml similar to how the long descriptions are quiet > a big part of our Packages files currently - beside the problem: Who will > write these descriptions: Upstream is not necessarily the best author… The question is: What is a "short" summary. From my packaging experience the first shot what we call "long description" is an snippet from the homepage of a project (by stripping of some redundancies and pure advertising stuff). It ends up in a one to three paragraphs text which easily can be turned into Markdown formatted text. I'm using this on the Debian Blends pages (see example below [1]) and because the translations are in the same format they can be easily plugged in (the example [1] is using translations into more than 10 languages ... if available in DDTP) For the content itself: I agree that upstream is not necessarily the best author but I assume that maintainers in other dists are doing it quite similar to waht we do in Debian: Revise a text from upstream or try to invent one. So the descriptions are there - we just need to define what a "good" (short) description is (there are bad examples as well[2]) > So translated long descriptions are currently out of the (shared) scope, > as we simple can't discuss everything in two and a half days, but to add > another quote: "It's xml, so we can add anything we like/need later". Sure. My point was: We (as in Debian) should increase our translation infrastructure to put it on a solid and reliable basis so once the App-Store effort comes to the point of seeking translations for including in their format we can simply provide the content. > I guess the DDTP project will be part of follow-up discussions as it is > similar to debtags and screenshots - its more or less the only working > solution - and you are right: all of them are badly needed. Yes. Kind regards and thanks for the App-Store effort and cross-distro discussion Andreas. [1] http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/tasks/bio [2] http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/tasks/typesetting -- http://fam-tille.de -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110127124507.gc3...@an3as.eu
Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:26, Andreas Tille wrote: > What I'm missing in the summary and what was probably not discussed is > another user oriented service: ddtp.debian.net. Translating > descriptions of packages^Wapplications is IMHO quite important to do the > last final step to complete world domination. As I know from some > discussion on debian-i18n list[1] DDTSS is severely broken and needs > definitely some love. Some effort to put it under DSA control is > somehow stalled and the technique behind needs some more love by a > gifted and dedicated programmer. Please do not forget: Those users who > say "I want to draw vector graphics." will say it in their mother tongue > and we geeks to frequently forget that this is not necessarily English. > The availability of translated descriptions is IMHO crucial for the > success of the App-Intaller attempt. The DDTP project is quite there > where we need to go but it needs more love. If I remember correctly, DDTP got a short mention and the result was: "Wow, debian really has translations for package descriptions?!?" Other distributions seem to have only failed (=very outdated) tries if any. AppStream focuses on translations of the name, keywords and (short) summary managed by upstream. We talked shortly about longer descriptions (possibly with markdown) but this would easily blow up the currently rather small app-data.xml similar to how the long descriptions are quiet a big part of our Packages files currently - beside the problem: Who will write these descriptions: Upstream is not necessarily the best author… So translated long descriptions are currently out of the (shared) scope, as we simple can't discuss everything in two and a half days, but to add another quote: "It's xml, so we can add anything we like/need later". I guess the DDTP project will be part of follow-up discussions as it is similar to debtags and screenshots - its more or less the only working solution - and you are right: all of them are badly needed. Best regards David Kalnischkies -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktimhtwxmks7e9ogxvdn2tvfzuprjw90+emy14...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Results of the App Installer Meeting
Hi,
thanks for the report and the fine work which the report is basing upon.
A view remarks:
On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:13:38PM +1000, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> We do not want the end users we target here to
> have to learn about packages: they already know what an application is,
> and this is what they actually care about ("I want Inkscape").
Cool. I think it is not even precise enough. Considering xapian is
involved it could rather be: "I want to draw vector graphics."
> - Access apps metadata through xapian
Very cool!
> - Access additional metadata through OCS (Open Collaboration
> Services)
> - Access screenshots, possibly through screenshots.debian.net (using
> a per-distro proxy) or similar services
For Debian todo list: A service as important for Debian and obviosely
for other should definitely moved under DSA control and should be
screenshots.debian.ORG !
> b) The Debian tagging system (debtags)
>Tagging applications can help users find the applications they look
>for. The meeting was too short to think about reaching a full
>agreement on this, but there was interest in the debtags system. If
>most distributions are interested in adopting this system, we will
>integrate debtags into the overall architecture.
Similarly here: DebTags is currently at debtags.alioth.debian.org. I
have noticed that debtags.debian.net "Works" :-) and there is no
debtags.debian.org. IMHO this would increase the visibility of a
technique which is underestimated and to less known / used even inside
Debian.
What I'm missing in the summary and what was probably not discussed is
another user oriented service: ddtp.debian.net. Translating
descriptions of packages^Wapplications is IMHO quite important to do the
last final step to complete world domination. As I know from some
discussion on debian-i18n list[1] DDTSS is severely broken and needs
definitely some love. Some effort to put it under DSA control is
somehow stalled and the technique behind needs some more love by a
gifted and dedicated programmer. Please do not forget: Those users who
say "I want to draw vector graphics." will say it in their mother tongue
and we geeks to frequently forget that this is not necessarily English.
The availability of translated descriptions is IMHO crucial for the
success of the App-Intaller attempt. The DDTP project is quite there
where we need to go but it needs more love.
Kind regards
Andreas.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2011/01/msg00044.html
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Results of the App Installer Meeting
JFYI.
Debian has been represented at the meeting by Enrico Zini (who has
blogged about various aspects of the meeting as well [1,2,3]) and David
Kalnischkies. In the end, quite some pieces of Debian technologies have
attracted interest and are on their way to be part of the proposed
solution. Well done!
Cheers.
[1] http://www.enricozini.org/2011/debian/appinstaller2011/
[2] http://www.enricozini.org/2011/debian/pkgshelf/
[3] http://www.enricozini.org/2011/debian/distromatch/
- Forwarded message from Vincent Untz -
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:57:41 +0100
From: Vincent Untz
To: distributi...@lists.freedesktop.org
Subject: Results of the App Installer Meeting
Hi all,
The cross-distro App Installer Meeting that was announced a few weeks
ago took place last week. It was a very productive meeting, with people
from Debian, Fedora, Mageia, openSUSE and Ubuntu attending.
We wanted to see how we can collaborate on the creation of a good user
experience for installing applications, and we reached concrete
results: we agreed on an architecture to achieve this, with specific
technologies to be used.
A quick foreword: with this project, the user experience is what matters
to us. This means that our approach is application-centric instead of
being package-centric. We do not want the end users we target here to
have to learn about packages: they already know what an application is,
and this is what they actually care about ("I want Inkscape"). It is in
no way an attempt to kill packages; on the contrary, we'll build on top
of them. But this application-centric focus has several impacts on the
design of the architecture, from the user interface to metadata that we
want to display to users.
Architecture
The overall architecture of the project is described at:
http://distributions.freedesktop.org/wiki/AppStream/Implementation
We aim for getting a working implementation as soon as possible by
tying together existing projects. The architecture allows different
implementations, though. In particular, there is no reason why other
client implementations shouldn't exist or the data shouldn't be accessed
by the existing, distribution-specific tools.
Here's a very high-level summary:
+ On the client side:
- Use the Ubuntu Software Center as the reference UI (it should be
possible to implement other UI since everything is open)
- Access apps metadata through xapian
- Access additional metadata through OCS (Open Collaboration
Services)
- Access screenshots, possibly through screenshots.debian.net (using
a per-distro proxy) or similar services
+ On the server side:
- Generate apps metadata, based on information coming from upstream
.desktop files
- Make this metadata (as well as icons and more) available, ideally
in the distribution repositories, on the mirrors
+ Per-distribution work:
- The tool to generate the apps metadata will possibly be per-distro
- Each distro can decide on some policy wrt OCS:
. Use a distro-specific server or not
. Display comments/ratings/screenshots from other distros or not
. etc.
While we do welcome comments, it's worth pointing out that it's easy to
get stuck on trying to plan the best architecture ever, and we'll avoid
this: this architecture is our plan, and we will implement it :-)
Additional architectural bits
=
There are additional bits that we looked at, but that did not fit into
to overall architecture yet. It is our intention to integrate these
bits, though.
a) Matching packages between distributions
This may become handy if we want to share data like screenshots,
comments or ratings. The decision to use such data from other
distributions should be up to each distribution, but we want to
enable this possibility.
This has other uses for the contributor communities, like easily
browsing patches from other distributions.
b) The Debian tagging system (debtags)
Tagging applications can help users find the applications they look
for. The meeting was too short to think about reaching a full
agreement on this, but there was interest in the debtags system. If
most distributions are interested in adopting this system, we will
integrate debtags into the overall architecture.
Where do we go now?
===
To keep us moving, we established a schedule for the development of this
project:
http://distributions.freedesktop.org/wiki/AppStream/ActionItems
Let me quickly summarize the timeline we're targetting (skipping some
details from the wiki page):
+ April: "Publish metadata / Port UI"
- Publish app metadata as part of the distros repos
- Make this app metadata available via xapian in all distros
- Port Ubuntu Software Center to non-Debian-based systems
+ July: "Integrate non-static metadata"
- Setup OCS serve
