Bug 441960

(In reply to comment #0 from pa ju)
> Few important enhancements to the updater should be added:
> 1) Show icon in front of the patch/update whether it can be updated or not.
> Sometimes there are dependency issues which do not allow the update/patch to be
> selected but user cannot know about it unless the text is read carefully. If
> such update/patch is still selected the updater simply does nothing and does
> not inform user about it. Green OK sign when no problem and yellow when there
> are issues and red when it's not possible to update. And if user still wants to
> select yellow one (red one should not even be selectable) then e.g. dependency
> issue must be resolved (with dependency solver) before updater can continue.
The updater applet doesn't know whether a patch can be applied before it triggers the transaction. That's the reason why it is not possible to show whether dependency problems might occur. 


> 2) When there are updates it would be very good to see what it the reason for
> the update. Now the text only shows what the updated application is but not
> what has changed. I assume that there is change information available. Both
> description of the application and change information should be shown.
A description for each patch is shown in the 'detailed view' when the users clicks a patch. If you cannot find such a description it is a bug. 

 
> 3) It would be nice to see from the task bar icon if there are new software
> updates. Currently it does not show. Only if there are patches the icon changes
> to red or yellow.
For optional patches or updated packages the icon stays green because we don't want to encourage users to update their systems if there is no need to. A yellow icon indicates recommended patches and red icons indicates security patches.


> 4) If update has been chosen to be not updated (e.g. due dependency problems)
> the updater should not show those updates any longer until new version has been
> released. It may still have dependency issues but this needs new decision. With
> software manager it is always possible to see those updates again which have
> been chosen not to update from the updater.
The updater applet is designed as a light weight applet and doesn't support setting package locks. Due to the fact that the list of available patches and packages is provided provided by libzypp packagelocks are respected.

You might want set a package lock for packages you don't want to update
See: http://en.opensuse.org/Libzypp/Locksfile

1) Not correct. In the text field it say e.g. for 'libmad0': "Shared library libmad. To be installed by dependency solvers.". This info can be utilized.

2) For patches correct. For updates not. There's no history or change log info about updates available.

3) Then make this configurable. When I'm using KDE4 I sure want to update to the latest because there are issues with KDE4 apps.

(In reply to comment #2 from pa ju)
> 1) Not correct. In the text field it say e.g. for 'libmad0': "Shared library
> libmad. To be installed by dependency solvers.". This info can be utilized.
Please provide a patch if you know how to extract a machine readable format that can be used for dependency solving from simple text strings that contain English sentences. We will carefully evaluate you patch.

> 2) For patches correct. For updates not. There's no history or change log info
> about updates available.
On my machines I can see descriptions for packages and patches as well. If a packages doesn't provide a description there isn't anything that can be shown.

> 3) Then make this configurable. When I'm using KDE4 I sure want to update to
> the latest because there are issues with KDE4 apps.
See bug 442388.

1) Unfortunately I don't have time for this and most likely not talent either (it's been years since I've written code last time). I'd still assume that simple string compare would be sufficient (converting first to lower case and searching only partial string will increase match probability).

I've seen the same text ("To be installed by dependency solvers.") before thus I assume that it comes from other application/tool and not from the patch/update.

2) Example from ffmpeg update. In updater I can see description: 
"ffmpeg is a hyper fast realtime audio/video encoder, a streaming server and a generic audio and video file converter. It can grab from a standard Video4Linux video source and convert it into several file formats based on DCT/motion compensation encoding. Sound is compressed in MPEG audio layer 2 or using an AC3 compatible stream."

but if I take a look at the same ffmpeg package I can see the same description but in addition: Technical data, Dependencies, Versions, File List and *Change Log*. However, it seems that the Change Log to my surprise does not contain changes between smaller updates but only major ones. Would it be possible to add support for version control system logs (advanced view or something)?

3) Pity. I really hope that these tools would interact between each other better instead user needs to launch separate tool, find the update/patch and disable it.