Experiment: an RPM that shows uninstalled apps in main menu

[Zack Cerza]

Denis Leroy wrote:
> Andrew Farris wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Yes I noticed also. I think it's just a matter of filtering the Mime 
> entries out of the desktop files...

Or instead causing the desktop file to do: "system-install-packages 
$package && $binary $file" or similar. :)

Zack