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Anyway, as pointed out by JackieBrown on another thread, the most interesting one to me is:
Obey Arthur Liu is planning to create a GTK+ GUI for the package management tool Aptitude that will work alongside improved ncurses and command-line interfaces. This will offer a new interface design geared toward usability and advanced functionality.
While Aptitude doesn't need a GUI, at least it will be an improvement over programs like Synaptic which do not provide a terminal version for the more sophisticated users. Aptitude will, presumably, now offer a choice of interfaces between Terminal, Ncurses, and GUI.
gnome users can survive with synaptic.
Adept is currently dead in experimental mode.
There is now a real opportunity to develop a Qt layer on top of Aptitude.
My guess would be that Gnome is still generally the higher priority and most-used desktop among Debian Developers. Once there is a dependable GTK interface, I'm sure it will be ported to Qt.
rickh wrote:Gnome is still the most-used desktop among Debian Developers.
May be, but not sure Debian developers need a GUI for apt-get or aptitude.
The priority should then be managed by having a look on what is currently missing at user level.
I've never seen a gnome user complaining about synaptic, but I've seen KDE users complaining about lack of Adept or a better aptitude Qt upper layer.
rickh wrote:Gnome is still the most-used desktop among Debian Developers.
May be, but not sure Debian developers need a GUI for apt-get or aptitude.
The priority should then be managed by having a look on what is currently missing at user level.
I've never seen a gnome user complaining about synaptic, but I've seen KDE users complaining about lack of Adept or a better aptitude Qt upper layer.
Well I'm one of the complainers.
I'm an aptitude guy. However, sometime I need some kind of GUI to find packages, so I have to use synaptic. And mixing both is not the best idea ever.
I also support the idea of having a GUI for Aptitude.
But if you just need and use it to find packages, you have no risk to harm your system with synaptic.
So no real problem or urgency for gnome. You can still install in command line.
At the opposite for KDE, if you want to avoid installation of 80MB of gnomish libraries just to easily find packages in GUI mode, you need to install adept-common and adept-manager from ubuntu. It works well, but not very clean for Debian users.
[currently using adept-common_2.1.3ubuntu25_all.deb + adept-manager_2.1.3ubuntu25_i386.deb in Lenny]
Ok, Kpackage is available, but also not based on Aptitude, and very heavy to load (don't know why). And mixing three tools for about the same use is not good. Better have a good one.
Now Adept is removed from Debian repositories, it is an opportunity to make a new Qt tool based on Aptitude, instead of spending time developing a new Adept which is apparently also not based on Aptitude (new Adept / dead in experimental mode).
In clear, try to put the effort where the real need is, because very very few gnome users are complaining about synaptic, and who generally love synaptic and will not accept to change it for ever. It would be perceived as a revolution in the gnome world which is not good.
Gnome users will then have synaptic in GTK, and a new Qt Aptitude GUI which could be ported in GTK at a next step (only if necessary and requested).
I'm an aptitude guy. However, sometime I need some kind of GUI to find packages, so I have to use synaptic. And mixing both is not the best idea ever.
Synaptic is excellent occasionally for researching packages. Even if one knows search terms in aptitude--~ddescription, ~mmaintainer, etc.--one doesn't get the cross referenced, tabulated presentation that synaptic offers. It can be worth the wait on the gui.
I go back to aptitude for any action though, with clipboard notes if necessary.
The synaptic gui is the model for the aptitude gui according to the page of a guy who claims to be doing it for Summer of Code. I didn't bookmark it. Read it a month ago, and I don't even remember how I got there.
"We have not been faced with the need to satisfy someone else's requirements, and for this freedom we are grateful."
Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, The UNIX Time-Sharing System
