Software Portal/Ideas

From openSUSE

Use this page to collect some ideas, discussions, use cases.

Use Cases

Recommendations System

• use a last.fm alike system for recommending "similar" packages (will have to put a lot of thought into what is a "similar" package though)
• use tag association and/or explicit linking between application package items to also provide a list of alternatives to a given application (e.g. konversation as an alternative to xchat, pidgin as an alternative to amsn)

Ideas

Klik integration

• also "integrate" klik at some point of progress, think of a "run now" link as well as the "install now" link
• would only be possible for a fraction of the entries (desktop apps), as it's really not suited for running all types of applications (e.g. an IMAP server)
• problem: needs support for klik in the distribution first
• To be honest, I think this would be a bit of a mess and would just clutter things more. Getting an app running will need to do nearly as much work as installing the package itself, and any apps klik _would_ be useful with are really small and we shouldn't care so much about the user having the application lying around. Basically, very rare use-case and perhaps more work for not really any advantage. --apokryphos 12:07, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
• To understand what klik is all about, look at the official klik presentation: http://klik.atekon.de/presentation/

MetaPackage Deployment

• Most *Software type* packages will eventually need to become separate metapackages. For example, I cannot remove KDEPim without removing the entire KDE base install pattern because that is how I installed it, A user may just want to remove a certain part of KDE - without wiping out the rest of KDE as well

End-User-Interface

• Something like Gnome-App-Install for Ubuntu in GNOME [1] and Adept Manager for KDE [2]
• *.ymp's can be added to this list for removal too.
• tie in system to already existing applications. Assign *.ymp to konqueror and FireFox as "Install this software."
• tie into things like SLAB - Right clicking > Remove, just like with ZMD right now.
• provide delta or change info (if available) so end user knows the what/why of an update --Smaug42 08:35, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• An option to Update/Upgrade software with one click and Uninstall software also with one click using a desktop client (like the CNR Plug-In) would be great instead of just be able to install software with the "one click install"

Packager Views

• specific UI pages for packagers, e.g.:
  • a list of applications that don't have packages for SUSE, and packagers can claim those

changelog

Wonder if it would be possible to show rpm changelogs for latest build of a given package on the portal. Would be nice.

package requests

Feature to request packages, and vote for requested packages. Integration with above "Packager Views" might be a good idea.

MS Winblows equivalents

Perhaps we could have some kind of tagging of packages that mark them as equivalents to well known software that runs on Winblows. Or maybe just a wiki-style list/table of equivalents

Libraries/Frameworks to use

Server backend

• spring-ws for the Web Service interface

Web client

• investigate using Grails for the web UI