Experiment: an RPM that shows uninstalled apps in main menu

[Andrew Farris]

Denis Leroy wrote:
> Bill Nottingham wrote:
>> Denis Leroy (denis at poolshark.org) said:
>>> For kicks and giggles, I hacked up a proof-of-concept RPM here for F-8 :
>>>
>>> http://www.poolshark.org/src/fedora-apps-0.1-1.fc8.i386.rpm
>>>
>>> After installation, you'll have to restart the gnome-panel with a 
>>> quick 'killall gnome-panel'. The rpm is 5 MB, which is not bad for 
>>> almost 1000 apps (remember we're only talking about GUI apps here, 
>>> i.e. apps that install a desktop file).
>>
>> Interesting idea. You're setting yourself up for a lot of pain on the
>> package maintenance side, I fear.
> 
> Well that all depends on how much scripting I'm prepared to make :-)
> 
> I used a number of scripts to extract the desktop and icon files out of 
> the RPMs, parse the desktop files, etc... in theory it's 100% 
> scriptable. Now, things would be considerably easier if this was 
> integrated into packagedb: flag packages that have desktop entries, add 
> information such as short description and icon. Then we could push the 
> idea further and add things such as screenshots, for example. Then we'd 
> have all the raw data necessary to create a real "fedora software 
> installation assistant".
> 
> There are some challenges to providing this through a regular package 
> review though: may need collaboration with redhat-menus (integration 
> into main menu) and/or desktop-utils owners (to update list of 
> uninstalled apps after an RPM is installed manually).

One issue right now is that all those applications show up as options in the 
'open with' menus of Gnome right now, even the not installed apps.  If you try 
to open an image with gimp while the fedora-apps rpm is installed the menu will 
show many image editors and viewers you don't have installed.  That obviously 
needs to be prevented.

-- 
Andrew Farris <lordmorgul at gmail.com> <ajfarris at gmail.com>
  gpg 0xC99B1DF3 fingerprint CDEC 6FAD BA27 40DF 707E A2E0 F0F6 E622 C99B 1DF3
No one now has, and no one will ever again get, the big picture. - Daniel Geer
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