[arch-general] GNOME Software: Status and integrable?

[Alex Jordan]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 5:26 PM, Karol Babioch <karol at babioch.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> now that GNOME 3.12 has been released and probably will hit the repos in
> the next couple of days/weeks, I'm wondering what the current status of
> "Software" is [1]? This is an application similar to an app store in the
> mobile world.
>
> I couldn't find it in the repos, and I wouldn't expect it to even work
> without some patching, because obviously it would have to be integrated
> into the packet management system. The only reference I could find in
> regards to Arch Linux was a forum thread from last year [2], which
> basically ended up in a mess without any real answers.

It is correct that GNOME Software uses PackageKit. As can be seen on
the feature matrix[1], libalpm support (which is upstream, so no
patching), while a little spotty, is fairly decent. I can't back this
up with code or documentation, but from my very cursory testing, the
PackageKit backend appears to do the right thing with regards to
updates (it doesn't sync the database).

You may also be interested in a recent thread which was started on the
GNOME desktop-devel-list list[2].

 [1]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/pk-matrix.html
 [2]: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2014-March/msg00107.html

> On the other hand I may have missed it, because GNOME is really good in
> using generic terms like "Software" and "Web" to name their
> applications, which are not great to search for :'(.
You are looking for the gnome-packagekit package.

> I'm not interested in another flame war about GNOME, when it hits the
> repos and things like that. I just want to know whether this particular
> application is available/works and if not what the technical hurdles
> would be to make it work and whether it is feasible to get it working in
> the near term. Arguably users of Arch Linux are expected to know how to
> use use the command line (including pacman) and I'm fine with that, but
> I wouldn't mind to be able to browse an app store, just for the fun of
> it ;).
>
> Best regards,
> Karol Babioch
>
> [1]: https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Software
> [2]: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=170223
>