GSOC09 MacPorts GUI

[Jeremy Huddleston]

On Jul 10, 2009, at 19:55, George Armah wrote:

> I was hoping Juan would have replied by now.

Oh, he replied to me directly (copied at bottom).  Thanks for replying  
to me as well.  This looks like a great project, and I look forward to  
seeing it mature =)




>> 1) Do you plan to support categories?  Ports list categories that  
>> they
>> belong to, so it would be nice to have a browsing option that  
>> allows us to
>> "expand" categories.
>
>
> The framework has that information. I also asked Juan to layout the  
> UI so
> that the main port list can easily be resized to accommodate a port  
> category
> list view on the left - kind of like in Finder. Clicking on each  
> category
> will filter the current port list to ports from just those  
> categories. If
> there is time we will work on implementing this.
>
>
> 2) How are variants handled?  Do you have a gui way to edit
>> $prefix/etc/macports/variants.conf?  What about per-port variants  
>> at install
>> time?
>
>
> The framework also exposes them but currently they are not exposed  
> in the
> GUI. I am not sure about editing variants.conf but per-port variants  
> at
> install time is certainly doable. We just have to figure out a  
> reasonable UI
> for it.
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> 3) You said, "I’m working into getting that separate process to be  
>> part of
>> the Framework and also make it send notifications back to the  
>> Framework to
>> know the progress of the port command being run." ... I'm curious  
>> what level
>> or notification you are designing.  It would probably be nice to  
>> have a
>> window that shows a general progress bar for the current port/ 
>> stage... but
>> for debugging purposes, it would be helpful if this could be  
>> expanded via
>> "Details" button or similar to show the verbose or debug output.
>
>
> The current design uses distributed objects to send messages from  
> the port
> process to the Framework. The GUI has access to these messages from  
> the
> Framework. Setting the verbose level is also possible using the  
> Framework.
> We are planning to display a progress bar at the very least. A  
> window with
> the log details should be fairly easy to do since we get all those  
> messages.
> I have asked Juan to speak to the other GSoC student to see if any  
> of his
> GSoC work would benefit us in this regard.
>
>
>
>> 4) Do you plan to have a preferences interface to common
>> $prefix/etc/macports/macports.conf options?
>
> We will need some help implementing this since I am not familiar  
> with the
> macports.conf file / modifying its preferences etc. If it is one of  
> the
> files the Tcl interpreter loads before performing port operations,  
> and is
> modifiable via Macports Tcl commands then it should fairly easy to do.
>
>
> I'll discuss the above with Juan and ask him to contact you with  
> some more
> questions. Our goal right now is to have a functional, non-buggy GUI  
> that
> performs all the basic port functions and can be easily extended with
> advanced features. I think we will have time to implement some of  
> the above
> suggestions.
>
>
> Thanks for the feedback!
> George.





On Jul 8, 2009, at 06:53, Juan Germán Castañeda Echevarria wrote:

> El 8 de julio de 2009 01:41, Jeremy Huddleston  
> <jeremyhu at macports.org>escribió:
>
>> Hi Juan,
>>
>> That looks very promising.  I'm excited about this work.  I do have  
>> a few
>> questions.
>>
>> 1) Do you plan to support categories?  Ports list categories that  
>> they
>> belong to, so it would be nice to have a browsing option that  
>> allows us to
>> "expand" categories.
>
>
> I planed to use a source view, but I ended droping it because the  
> interface
> design was a lot more complex (for me and users). Categories will be
> filtered using the advanced search predicate editor.
>
>
>>
>>
>> 2) How are variants handled?  Do you have a gui way to edit
>> $prefix/etc/macports/variants.conf?  What about per-port variants  
>> at install
>> time?
>
>
> I have thought of per-port variants only, but now that you say that,  
> I think
> I could add something in the preferences window to change the  
> vavriants.conf
> file
>
>
>>
>>
>> 3) You said, "I’m working into getting that separate process to be  
>> part of
>> the Framework and also make it send notifications back to the  
>> Framework to
>> know the progress of the port command being run." ... I'm curious  
>> what level
>> or notification you are designing.  It would probably be nice to  
>> have a
>> window that shows a general progress bar for the current port/ 
>> stage... but
>> for debugging purposes, it would be helpful if this could be  
>> expanded via
>> "Details" button or similar to show the verbose or debug output.
>>
>
> Yes, that's the idea, I want to have progress bars and also detailed  
> log
> views. The level of the notifications are customizable because I  
> change the
> ui_$priority tcl methods to send the notifications.
>
>
>>
>> 4) Do you plan to have a preferences interface to common
>> $prefix/etc/macports/macports.conf options?
>>
>
> I haven't thought of preferences so far, in fact I added the  
> preferences
> interface just to make it more friendly for this demo version (this  
> way you
> don't have to change the source code). But thanks for pointing that,  
> I'll
> take a look at macports.conf.
>
>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Jeremy
>>
>>
> Thanks to you!!
>
> -- 
> Ash Mac durbatulûk, ash Mac gimbatul, ash Mac thrakatulûk agh burzum- 
> ishi
> krimpatul.
> Juanger. http://xocoruby.blogspot.com