[Mageia-discuss] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github

Fri Oct 1 14:27:30 CEST 2010

  Le 01/10/2010 12:38, Fabrice Facorat a écrit :
+> I've been following closely all the Mandriva vs Mageia story. I found
+> it unfortunate that we have to come to this way, but I guess there's a
+> serious fracture between Mandriva and part of its community. We have
+> no choice except to cope with this and try to do our best to allow
+> this unfortunate situation to found a sensible solution in the future.
+>
+> As we know, one of the Mandriva strenght are the Mandriva tools,
+> however Mandriva tools have some issues :
+> - they are written in perl. Sorry for perl dev, but I do still think
+> that perl is harder to understand than C-like based syntax langages.
+> However we must admit that we are not going to rewrite all the
+> Mandriva tools ;-) However better documentation ( PerlDoc tags ) could
+> help a little.
+>
+> - Mandriva tools are not used by others distributions ( except
+> PCLinuxOS, United Linux, and ... Mageia ) and so have few external
+> contributions : They notably lack visibility.
+
+I do agree with this.
+
+> I do think also that Mandriva will have to use its ressources in an
+> efficient way.
+>
+> Here aree my proposals, feel free to discuss :
+>
+> 1. host Mandriva tools on github or code.google.com. This will ease
+> fork maintenance and tracking, to contribute back ( without having to
+> have a Mandriva account )
+
+Yes. Having their own 'site' and independent platform may help.
+
+> 2. Make some decisions about the tools we should keep, and the ones we
+> should ... trash. For example we did replace printerdrake with
+> system-config-printer ( python ), and msec have been rewritten (
+> python ). Whereas I do think that system-config-printer is way buggier
+> than printerdrake, I guess that at some points, we will have to do
+> this more and more : replace some Mandriva tools with for example some
+> Fedora ones. Please note however that this bring its own issues :
+> python vs perl, and the integration with the rest of Mandriva
+> infrastructure
+
+We need to see what is still functional, what is broken (and so what is 
+to repair), and what is to drop. Eventually, what is to support and 
+repair again (printerdrake?) if possible.
+
+For what I know, there are many tools that work : RPMDrake and related, 
+Drakstats, Diskdrake, Harddrake, DrakX11, Drak3D, DrakUPS, DrakFirewall, 
+DrakGuard (wonderful this one) but may networking tools to share network 
+or use VPN, Samba, NFS, WebDav, and eventually along with Diskdrake, are 
+broken. Others such as Draksnapshot and DrakSamba (not sure if it works 
+or not) are a pain due to insufficient functionalities or 
+outdated/painful GUI. There is a nice theming functionality in the MCC 
+that is also probably broken or difficult to use, that could be restored 
+or explained.
+
+> 3. A decision will have to be made concerning net_applet and NetworkManager
+
+Yes, even though I think we should give another chance to NetApplet and 
+see what should be fixed to make it better. NetAppler has the advantages 
+of being linked to DrakFirewall, perhaps other tools, and to be 
+independent of any environment.
+
+> 4. Whereas I do love rpmdrake, I do think also that something will
+> have to be done about it as its UI is clearly outdated and not on par
+> with the competition :
+> - Ubuntu software center :
+> http://seilo.geekyogre.com/2010/09/software-center-with-a-dose-of-zeitgeist-and-maybe-teamgeist/
+> , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Software_Center ,
+> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter
+> - iTunes App Store :
+> http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_to_download_iphone_apps_from_apple_itunes_store.html
+> , http://cybernetnews.com/download-iphone-firmware-20-itunes-77-app-store-and-more/
+> - Interesting discussion about PackageKit direction :
+> http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/a-story-about-updates-and-people/
+>
+> So we may have to completely rewrite rpmdrake UI or switch to
+> packagekit with and urpmi backend.
+
+I still have a very strong faith and appreciation for RPMDrake. I really 
+think it is well designed and intuitive, despite it's little issues and 
+being slow (honestly, PackageKit is slow and also has issues so...).
+
+The real issue that RPMDrake has is it's Aplications with GUI filter. 
+Even if I think this functionalitiy is really good for beginners, 
+RPMDrake is a -package- manager. Mandriva does need a real and dedicated 
+Application manager (could be called an AppCenter) where beginners would 
+find a way to install (shop?) applications with a very nice layout, 
+presentation, clear icons, screenshot, and no irritating choice of 
+hundreds of dependencies with barbaric names.
+It might be difficult, but much more convenient for those who just want 
+things to work in a snap (or in very few clicks).
+
+This would allow to place back again the default filter on "All" (should 
+be renamed to "Show all packages") for the RPMDrake package manager. We 
+would then have an AppCenter and a real package manager for advanced 
+package management, without forgetting a dedicated tool with GUI to 
+manage orphans more efficiently.
+
+Yet, all of this demands a huge lot of work and we will need huge 
+resources...
+
+> 5. Junior tasks contributions. I noticed while visiting the
+> LibreOffice website. They have junior task for people willing to
+> contribute to the codebase, and most of theses junior tasks consist to
+> improve code clarity, fix comments. I guess that the same thing could
+> be done with Mandriva tools, notably adding perldoc tags/comments.
+
+Yes. This will help people from outside understand better how the 
+program works. Reading the code itself isn't that easy even if it is 
+well written.
+
+> Last but not least, I know that on Mageia ML, there was a discussion
+> about the people we should target. Here are some interesting
+> reflexions :
+> Sweet Caroline : http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/sweet-caroline/
+> fedoraproject.org redesign update :
+> http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/fedoraproject-org-redesign-update/
+> You must be this tall to ride: __ :
+> http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/you-must-be-this-tall-to-ride-__
+
+Will read them when I'll find the time to...
+
+Thomas.
+
+