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• Launchpad entry: https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/kubuntu-feisty-adept-changes

• Packages affected: adept, update-manager

Summary

Changes to make to Adept in Feisty.

Rationale

Adept is not currently maintained by its author so the Adept spec made for Edgy was not implemented. However there are a number of common usability problems and requested features which we should fix for Feisty.

Use cases

Mark uses Amarok to install MP3 support with the built-in script that runs adept_batch, he gets confused when adept_batch finishes downloading but gives no obvious indication that it has finished.

Jane installs GDM from adept and gets confused when the user interface pauses, she doesn't realise she has to show the embedded konsole and answer the debconf questions through the ncurses interface.

Matt wants to disable unsupported software in Kubuntu, but finds no easy way to do this.

Scope

Small Adept changes and porting Software Properties to KDE.

Design

We want Adept to ask debconf questions graphically, rather than through the embedded console as it does at the moment. Add libqt-perl to the desktop seed. In Adept set the DEBCONF_FRONTEND environment variable to "kde" to use the graphical debconf bindings. kdesu currently does not correctly pass the XAUTHORITY cookie to let debconf show its windows in X. Fix kdesu to copy the .Xauthority file to /tmp, change permissions to be readable to the sudo user and set the $XAUTHORITY to point to the .Xauthority temporary file.

adept_batch should close itself when it has finished installing, the scripts which use adept_batch (language-selector and amarok's install-mp3 script) already tell the user if the download is successful or not.

Add changelog support to adept_updater. On updater in the list of packages add a button on the details of each package for "Show changelog", clicking this pops up a dialogue which shows the changes since the currently installed version. Changelogs are downloaded from changelogs.ubuntu.com.

The AlwaysEnableUniverseMultiverse specification requires the user to be notified of which packages are supported and which are not. We will add a Kubuntu logo emblem to the package description next to the package name to indicate the package is from the main archive, and therefore commercially supported. A tooltip on the emblem will explain its meaning.

AlwaysEnableUniverseMultiverse also requires it to be trivial to turn off unsupported repositories. The Adept repository manager has a number of other usability issues. We will work around this with the same method used in Synaptic, using a new separate application System Properties. We will port System Properties to Qt 4, reimplementing the GUI elements in Qt Designer and using the existing frontend abstraction from System Properties. When System Properties is installed we will alter Adept to run it instead of its own repository manager dialogue. System Properties will need to be put into a separate binary package as it is currently included with update-manager.

Libept needs to be fixed to use the translations from libept.po. Currently it looks in adept.po making much of the user interface untranslated. It should set the gettext domain explicitly to pick up its own translations.

adept_installer should make use of the popularity data in the application .desktop files it reads. Add a column in the list of applications with 5 stars highlighted depending on the popularity.

CategorySpec