GSOC Idea: Packages End User UI

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> On 03/25/2009 06:03 PM, mapleoin at lavabit.com wrote:
> 
>> The proposal is to create another view of the pkgdb aimed at the general
>> fedora user. The project will be integrated with existing tools (yum,
>> bodhi) with a desire to centralize their information and present it in a
>> suitable form for the intended audience. It will provide package
>> information such as: project website, pkg version, occupied space,
>> categories, dependencies, user commenting/reviewing of packages, user tags
>> with keywords (which will be exported to other tools in the future and
>> used for searching).
> 
> Not to put a damper on your idea, but this is precisely one of the goals
> of Fedora Community. See:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-announce-list@redhat.com/msg01493.html
> 
> That email doesn't put it very well, but I think you'll find that it
> will cover a lot of the bases you're interested in. We're hopeful to
> have something live within the next few weeks.
> 
> Once we've got that up and running, there will undoubtedly be
> functionality that is in your list that we have not provided yet, and I
> think adding those apps to the Fedora Community environment will be a
> great GSOC.
> 
I disagree.  I think this is a great thing to do this year in the
PackageDB.  When Fedora Community is up and running, giving access to
the data via the Fedora Community platform could be a great project for
next year's summer of code (or over the course of the year if maploin
wants to continue working on that aspect). There's a few reasons for this:

1) Fedora Community pulls data from other places and puts them together
usefully.  This is information that belongs in the PackageDB.  Exposing
the information via Fedora Community is not precluded by this.

2) In fact, this work is going to be essential for helping Fedora
Community to do its work.  Currently, Fedora Community doesn't store
information in the databases itself.  It uses the data from the other
Fedora Services.  Having packagedb changes available via RSS feeds, tag
metadata, and a search interface for the tag metadata are useful for
Fedora Communityas well as PackageDB.

3) Quite a bit of this work needs to be done anyway.  Tagging of
packages in the PackageDB is a prerequisite for the redesign of how yum
works with groups.  Fedora Community is structured to primarily be a
consumer and aggregator of information rather than a provider of
information to other apps.  Writing code that generates the tag data
from the packagedb flows naturally from the other information that the
PackageDB stores.

4) Fedora Community is continuing to evolve.  As far as I know, the
first version is trying to focus on developer UI.  This is going to work
 on adding end user UI to an existing stable service.  Even if we build
a Fedora Community interface on top of this data for next year's GSoC
we'll still have benefited from having users using the existing
interface and suggesting enhancements that we can take into account when
designing the next generation interface.

This is necessary work that will pay dividends for Fedora Community as
well as the PackageDB.

-Toshio

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