#36 Feature Suggestion: Portage Queue

[Blake Turner]

It would be handy, especially with say an emerge -u
world if it were possible for porthole to create a list
of packages to be upgraded, and this list could be
perused, modified (packages added.removed per package
use flags fiddled with before you set it upgrading files.)

Also if you could queue up packages from the main window
(right-click add to queue or something)

While I'm suggesting things, it would be handy if the
icons to the left of installed packages could be used
to indicate the package status.

Suggestion:
Green: Normal/Installed
Yellow: Newer Version Exists
Blue: Unstable package (~arch branch)
Other icon: in queue

I hope you take these ideas into account, porthole
seems to have a lot of potential to be a powerfull app
and take a lot of the pain out of using portage (pain
is relative... i'd rather deal with portage than go
back to rpm's or straight src bz2's)

[Blake Turner]

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Ah, it turns out the current queue does behave the way I
expected, I was just trying to use a --pretend one earlier
so I couldn't remove the packages I didn't want

So i guess what i'm saying on the queue front is:
-An Ask mode (so you can calc all the deps/upgrades and
fiddle with them before they start)
-Use flag modification
-Better intergration with main window (such that you can
view the info windows on the packages your updating)

[Tommy]

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Thanks for your comments.

We're currently working on improved handling of upgrades and
use flags. Some sort of ask dialog is on the todo list, as
is saving a list of upgradable packages for perusal and
later installation.

We've updated the main view in CVS to include information on
the installed version and the version portage would upgrade
to for each package, making it easier to see the status of
packages while browsing.

Handling of masked packages is also improved, meaning the
list of packages portage thinks are upgradable is now much
more sensible.

Hopefully we'll be able to release another stable version soon.

[Brian Dolbec]

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I had been working on world package dependencies, but ran
into difficulties and was not able to get porthole to agree
with emerge output with enough accuracy. I also ran into a
nasty bug that had to do with threading the task and
handling the gui output. It had to be disabled for the time
being.

I do plan on completeing that task as well as improving the
upgrades listing even more.

[Nobody/Anonymous]

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Sorry if this seems a little presumptuous, but I'd check out
Synaptic's (from Ubuntu/Debian) handling of dependencies,
and the whole process in general. When you select a
package, it immediately calculates and then reports the
required dependencies. (The equivalent of running and ask
or a pretend.) Then it asks you if you want to proceed. If
you select the affirmative, it adds all those packages to a
queue. When you're done picking new packages, you hit
apply, and everything goes off and runs, with an optional
terminal window to watch the details.

It's pretty effin' slick, and if porthole worked as cleanly,
I'd switch back to Gentoo.

[Brian Dolbec]

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I have added a queue pause and run feature to the terminal and have plans to add a timer as well.
Look for it in the next release.