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Revision as of 14:00, 14 September 2011 by Elad (talk | contribs)


Zif as Default PackageKit Backend for Desktop Users

Summary

Use zif instead of yum as the default PackageKit backend, but keep yum installed by default (to use as a CLI only).

Owner

  • Email: elad@fedoraproject.org

Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora 17
  • Last updated: September 14, 2011
  • Percentage of completion: 00%


Detailed Description

Zif is a package management backend for PackageKit, designed to do things right. It preforms much better than yum with PackageKit UIs, making the UI output results much faster. As yum is more tested and used than zif, we should keep yum for CLI by default.

The only change will be installing zif by default and making PackageKit use it instead of yum.

Benefit to Fedora

We will get a faster, more responsive package management UI, thus addressing many user complaints about a slow package management UI.

Scope

  1. Add zif as default package for all desktops (that has a packagekit UI installed by default) in comps.
  2. Make sure Zif works well with yumdb access.
    • This might require standardizing yumdb format, and/or creating a shared library to access yumdb, to reduce code duplication and make bugs easier to fix.
      • Or making yum use sqlite instead of using the filesystem as a database. This approach will probably improve yum performance as well.

How To Test

  1. Make sure Zif is installed.
    1. Update, remove, install, and search packages in PackageKit frontends, including gnome-packagekit, kpackagekit and pkcon. make sure they all work as expected.

User Experience

Faster package management UIs for Desktop users. CLI users will be able to keep using yum as they used to.

Dependencies

Everything needed is already in the Fedora repositories.

Contingency Plan

  • Just don't ship zif by default

Documentation

Release Notes

  • Fedora 17 now uses Zif as the default PackageKit backend, providing a faster and more responsive package management UI. yum is still installed by default for CLI usage.

Comments and Discussion