Ubuntu Wiki

• Launchpad Entry: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/smartpm

• Created: Date(2005-10-31T22:52:04Z) by MichaelVogt

• Contributors: MichaelVogt, ColinWatson, JeffWaugh

• Packages affected: smartpm, apt

Summary

There is a new package management system available written by GustavoNiemeyer called "smart". It is able to deal with debs, RPM, slackware tgz (at the same time). We should consider using it in Ubuntu and figure out what features (if any) are missing.

Rationale

Smart has a very clean architecture and is used by many other distributions already. It has the potential to become the de-facto standard as a package manager.

Use cases

Scope

We need to evaluate how to make a migration from apt to smart possible and painless and what features/changes are required to make smart the first-class package manager for Ubuntu.

Design

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

There are various features that we would like to get for smart:

• tracking and auto-removal of unused dependencies (just like aptitude)
• use that in gnome-app-install to be able to automatically remove the dependencies that were installed for a given application
• use the "automatically-installed" info in the problemResolver (consider non-automatic packages more important during conflict resolution)
• support for translated package descriptions (similar to the Debian DDTP format?)

• support for "deb-src" type URIs (still required with the NoMoreSourcePackages spec)?

• Qt frontend (to make Riddell happy - this requires it to be possible to access the konsole terminal widget from pyqt.

• port the tools (gdebi, update-manager, gnome-app-install, update-notifier, unattended-upgrades) to smart
• give the Gtk UI HIG love and improve it in general (model after the synaptic glade file?)
• change the software-properties channel editor to edit channels in a nicer way

• improve the gpg key handling in smart and auto-import the apt-keys (http://lists.labix.org/pipermail/smart-labix.org/2006-June/001055.html)

• make the transition from apt easier by reading apt's sources.list file and dynamically track the content there (http://svn.smartpm.python-hosting.com/trunk/smart/plugins/aptchannelsync.py) [make this a two way process]

• switch /etc/cron.daily/apt to smart (but provide the same features)
• the installer makes heavy use of apt-get/aptitude, this needs to be done
• progress information on installing/fetching via a fd needs to be supported for the installer
• smart testing team (with jdub in it!)
• the tools like apt-listchanges/apt-listbugs/debconf need to continue working
• the package needs to be split into smart{-gtk,-whatever frontend}
• dist-upgrade where the python version changes may become a issue, we need to check this

  • should be easier given PythonRoadmap

• do checking of the time/space consumption in a clean chroot for upgrade/complex installs
• memory is a big issue on the desktop and alternate install CDs