Features/ZifByDefaultForDesktop

= 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

 * Name: Elad Alfassa


 * Email: elad@fedoraproject.org

Current status

 * Targeted release: Fedora 18
 * 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.

How To Test

 * 1) Make sure Zif is installed.
 * 2) 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

 * Upstream zif homepage
 * Upstream README
 * Upstream README about PackageKit integration configuration

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

 * See Talk:Features/ZifByDefaultForDesktop