Re: [Synaptic-devel] Distribution selection

[Guillaume Pratte]

> > > > [...] the only thing missing in my opinion in Synaptic
> > > > would be distribution selection, i.e. beeing able to select between
> > > > stable, testing, unstable and experimental [...]
> > >
> > > This is probably much more work than it looks at first :) There are
> > > quite a few tricky issues that need to be solved first, before
> > > synaptic can fully support distribution selection. [...]
> >
> > Thanks.
>
> I played around with this last night. I think it's possible and maybe
> even easier than I initially thought. 

Great!

> But I need some brainstorming here, how should be represent it in a gui?

I think we need to make it as simple as possible.

> Should we make a switch (maybe in the preferences) where you select your
> default Distribution and then another in the main window where you can
> override the distribution for each pkg individually?

The switch in the preferences is a good idea, but I don't think that an 
individual package override will be usefull. That override will be complex to 
implement and to maintain, and it will not provide any value add to the 
software.

If someone wants to install package X from testing then package Y from 
unstable, that person should do this in two separate operations, changing the 
distribution in the preferences between each operations. 

Also, the "-t" option of apt-get applies to all of the packages of the command 
line, so, as far as I know, it is not possible to install from many 
distributions in one command.

> Should we have something like "apt-cache showpkg" to see what versions are
> available (also apt-cache showpkg does not show to what distribution they
> belong, at least not directly)?

I was not aware of this command, thanks :-)

But, once again, I don't think we need to provide this functionnality.

> I wonder how we could integrate it in the gui without confusing the
> newbies.

What I see if the following :

 1. Provide a new tab in the preferences dialog in order to let the user 
select the distribution. Inform the user in that tab that the choices present 
in this tab depends on the sources he/she has set-up in the repositories 
dialog. (I am not a gui expert, so it might not be the best way to implement 
this concept).

 2. When the user press OK, if the distribution changed, refresh the package 
list to show the packages from that distribution.

This will also affect the "Upgrade All" and "Dist Upgrade" functionalities, I 
guess.

What do you think about it?

Guillaume Pratte