Revision [207]
This is an old revision of MageiaAppDb made by StorMi on 2010-10-24 10:37:02.
The project's goal is to address the following listed needs, through a web application (hopefully hosted on mageia servers), which could be the main access point for users searching for information on the available packages, backports requests and new soft resquests handling.
Which needs do we want to address?
(roughly prioritized : high priority, medium priority, lower priority but nice to have)
- for packagers, testers and users:
- find information about available packages for each Mageia release (stables + cauldron)
- link to project's homepage + changelogs for updates
- maintainer name
- latest news
- latest security/bugfix updates
- latest backports
- (for testers) latest packages in testing or backports_testing
- push information (rss, mail, twitter?) for security/bugfix updates and backports
- localized description (when available, english standard summary from the RPM otherwise)
- screenshots
- list known issues in Mageia for this package (from bugzilla)
- package popularity (bases on which stats? Votes? Pages views? Mirror stats?)
- user/packagers/testers comments
- links to useful resources about this package (mageia wiki, blogs, ...)
- other classical package information
- see only information your are interested in:
- customization (which releases you want to follow, and if you want which packages groups, which packages you want to follow)
- for users:
- easily request backports / vote for an existing backport request
- easily request new software integration in repositories / vote for an existing software request
- easy access to bug tracker for the selected application/package
- application view rather than just a package view ?
- one-click package installation
- ability to contribute better descriptions for existing packages (as they say many package descriptions are useless)
- for testers
- *easy opt-in as tester for specific packages ou package groups*
- for packagers
- *collect and see users' needs (backports, new softs)*
- *request for testing (especially for update candidates and package version upgrade (aka backports) candidates)*
- *empower users into testers ("you asked for this backport, please test it and report back. Do you accept to test future backports for this package too?")* or even into packagers (see which new apps users requested, and try to build the src.rpm for it)
People can be packagers for some packages (or package groups), testers for others, and simple users for the remaining packages, need to take that into account.
Some constraints:
- Simple yet powerful UI
- Make it outstand anything done by other distros (well, make it just work at first) :)
- integration into Mageia website (using the LDAP user database). If possible, nice to have : SSO (single sign on).
Why a dedicated application and not just using bugzilla?
- Far simpler to use UI than bugzilla for users.
- Bugs still go to bugzilla.
- user front-end can be translated (if requesting a backport is as simple as choosing the package name and version)
- we define what the database contains, so we can add whatever useful information we need about packages (for users, testers and/or packagers)
- if packagers really really need bugzilla tickets to work, there may be a way to create them automatically from the new app
- packagers can learn to use a new app for backport requests and new package requests. Yes they can :)
What about Sophie?
Ideally, mageia-app-db and Sophie's efforts would be joined, in order to see together where mageia-app-db stops and where sophie comes at rescue, how mageia-app-db could benefit from sophie's vast knowledge on the package database, and maybe how to merge some features of the web frontend between sophie.zarb.org and mageia-app-db.
What's the name of this project?
At the moment, « mageia-app-db », but I'm sure we can find a better name when it'll be in production, because it's not very appealing :)
Already available resources for this project
- project lead
- Samuel Verschelde (Stormi)
- specifications, development
- Adrien Gallou (technical lead)
- Samuel Verschelde (Stormi)
- alpha/beta testing
- Rémi Verschelde (Akien)
- Daniel Tartavel
Resources needed for the project development
- mageia board approval, without which there would be no such project
- other devs
- design (we have to make a pretty web application)
- a mageia sysadm team member for coordination with the Mageia project
- interaction with Sophie / common features merge if needed / help using the RPM databases : Olivier Thauvin ?
- translators (first version can be english only, but localization is planned from a technical point of view from the start)