Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Meetings/MacPortsMeeting2018/UserExperience


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Timestamp:
Mar 12, 2018, 2:32:36 PM (7 years ago)
Author:
neverpanic (Clemens Lang)
Comment:

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  • Meetings/MacPortsMeeting2018/UserExperience

    v1 v1  
     1= MacPorts User Experience Improvements
     2
     3== Aliases
     4Should we support specifying aliases? The consensus seems to be that there is not really a need for it at the moment, especially since we allow abbreviating commands.
     5
     6== Learning from Gentoo: Displaying an Execution Plan
     7* Gentoo shows a [http://www.krizalys.com/sites/default/files/colors-everywhere.png nice summary] of what it will do when upgrading packages. It uses colors, font weight and a column with status letters to tell users:
     8  * Which ports that are being changed are requested (bold)
     9  * The old and new versions
     10  * Whether the port will be upgraded, freshly installed as a dependency and whether it will be compiled from source
     11  * The variants (use-flags)
     12  * The download size
     13  * A summary of the operations to be performed
     14* A lot of this information is not very easy to display in MacPorts because we do not compute a complete execution plan for upgrades before executing it, but rather recursively iterating through dependencies (which may in turn pull in other dependencies, etc).
     15* For example, our package index does not know whether a binary package is available
     16* libsolv would help with some of these issues, but requires accurate dependency information in the portindex.
     17  * Initial plan was to extend portindex and use symbolic execution of the variant sections when parsing a portfile for the portindex so that the changes done by a variant could be added to the index.
     18
     19== Learning from Gentoo: Passing Messages to Users
     20* Gentoo has a mechanism to display messages to users
     21  * It's not hard to implement, could be a potential GSoC task
     22  * We could have a format that allows selecting which users see a certain message, e.g. `showif: os() >= 10.6`, `showif: port-installed(foobar)`
     23
     24== Learning from Gentoo: Colors
     25* Colors could make output nicer to read
     26* The split between `macports1.0` and the `port(1)` command line client makes it somewhat difficult to use ANSI color escape sequences, since theoretically, `macports1.0` could be used by a non-commandline-client.
     27* A simple first step would be to make warnings yellow and errors red
     28* As far as visibility on light and dark backgrounds is concerned, we should be fine if we only use the 8 standard colors
     29* Aljaž will implement this as a first step: #56022
     30
     31== Making Build Failures More Bearable
     32* We could have a simpler method to inform the project about failed builds of ports
     33  * E.g. a one-click button on a port's website (on a hypothetical new website)
     34  * Just a "this port is broken for me" is not really useful without logs
     35  * We could do opt-in submission of build failures, e.g. if the user is in interactive mode
     36    * We could run some quick analysis to speed up analysis, such as "OS version: x.y.z", "non-default prefix", "known problem: no destroot found", etc.
     37    * This could be done as a GSoC project
     38  * Other one-click buttons on a port website:
     39    * This port is outdated: Lets us focus on updating ports that users care about to maximize the value we generate with the time invested (perceived currency vs. actual currency)
     40    * This port is important to me
     41
     42== Statistics
     43* Nobody is keen on the Ruby server part. The client is fine, but we should replace the server part with a new website.
     44* The problem is that we have always been waiting for the website
     45* Usual approach in other projects is to set up third-party website that just works
     46* With the message feature outlined above, we could improve participation in statistics; e.g. push a message that will be displayed as long as a certain file does not exist. Ask user to run a command that will record decision whether to contribute in this file.