[Nix-dev] Nix GUI

[Tony White]

On 11 April 2010 21:37, Anders F Björklund <afb at algonet.se> wrote:
> Marc Weber wrote:
>
>>> I made a proof-of-concept implementation of a "--gui"
>>> that would use graphic interface rather than console.
>>
>> What features does this gui provide?
>
> Somewhere inbetween "none" and "a nice start and end". :-)
> Basically it was just to see what could be done from Perl.
> (I've mostly used Python or Ruby for other GUI scripting,
> while using Perl for various system admin tasks and magic)
>
> It would be possible to expand it into a similar perl wrapper
> for other nix tasks than just what nix-install-package does,
> that would just fork a system call to "nix-env" or "curl".
> Something like what Smart offers for other package managers ?
>
> * http://smartpm.org/
>
>> is in a --gui for nixos or nix-env or a different tool?
>
> In this little test it was just for "nix-install-package".
> But it could be for any perl script, like nix-pull or so...
>
> To integrate "proper" with nix-env and the rest of it, would
> probably take C++ and a libnix.so and a real Qt interface ?
>
> --anders
>
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Hi all,
Packagekit might be the way to go I believe :
http://www.packagekit.org/pk-intro.html
The ui can be left to the respective developers and user selection that way.
There are both gtk and qt4 front ends for packagekit.
http://www.packagekit.org/gtk-doc/index.html
libpackagekit is obviously written in C but I would like to think that
in their source repo, somewhere, there could be some method of using
perl to interact with libpackagekit (Or python or maybe ruby.)
Bindings of some sort or using dbus bindings, possibly.
If you look at the back end matrix :
http://www.packagekit.org/pk-matrix.html
Not a single package type can perform the roll back feature, something
nix can do.

I personally am not totally sold on packagekit but only because it is
not quite stable enough to be used in production. It was pushed onto
Fedora users a while ago, when it clearly wasn't ready. It still
isn't. That doesn't really apply to a distro like NixOS and it could
potentially provide an easy graphical tool for users of the nix
package manager on other distros.
It should become good after a bit more development or at least provide
the basis for a workable fork in the future. With most of the other
distros having a back end for it now and the amount of work it saves
writing a package manager ui, why not give it a shot?
If not, I will have a go eventually, when I get round to learning a bit more C.

Writing a whole set of tools for graphical package management seems
like a lot of work, especially seeing how packagekit could take a
large amount of the grunt work out of it.
What do you think? Is packagekit workable?

Thanks,
Tony