Package management abstraction with D-Bus

Richard Hughes recently proposed to use D-Bus to abstract the package management solutions for Linux. He implemented the abstraction in the “PackageKit” layer and showed a working GUI.

Richard Hughes proposed his idea some weeks ago by listing several problems of today’s software management on Linux systems: if you update with the help of a (X-) GUI a crash of X can result in serious damage of the package management database. Also, the current tools are all distribution or apt/yum/etc. specific and make it harder for users to switch between the distributions. Another issue is locking: you cannot update, install and check at the same time or with different users. And last but not least there is hardly any form of fine grained user control there. Richard now suggested to use a D-Bus based solution: a system service would - on the one hand -...