Re: [Synaptic-devel] Upgrading KDE packages

[Guillaume Pratte]

> > Is there a _simple_ way to, say, upgrade all one's KDE package to a new
> > version? 
>
> My I ask, why you don't perform an upgrade (or dist-upgrade) of your
> whole system? The 'upgrade' method will only upgrade packages that are
> already installed on the system.

That's true, but I am one of these Debian power-users that run on a mixed 
testing/unstable environment and that usually only upgrade packages when an 
new upstream version is available, not only when there is a typo in the 
installation script corrected and a -2 version is made available.

So, in short, I like to control what I upgrade. Always dist-upgrading to 
testing would take too much bandwith. Also, I selectively take some packages 
from unstable (like KDE), but I don't trust unstable as a whole -- thus I 
would fear doing an apt-get dist-upgrade on unstable just to get the latest 
KDE...

> > I also tried a filter like this :
> >  - View / New filter
> > That works well, but I always forget about this feature, and in fact, I
> > remembered it while writing this email.
>
> It is a pity that the filters are not explained in the manual - perhaps
> I will find some time to resolve this issue.

Honestly, speaking for myself, I usually don't read manuals. I really think 
that the user interface should be "self documented".

> > Should't be an easier way? Any suggestions? Any other users thinking like
> > me that Something is missing there?
>
> What was uneasy? Did you have any problems creating new filters? Was the
> dialog confusing? Or do you suggest another method/concept?

It's just that I had this task "Upgrade the whole KDE" in mind, and that 
mapping this task into "Let's create a filter to only show all KDE package 
that can be updated" did not occur to me at first.

The filter dialog is not really confusing. There is some room for 
ameliorations (isn't there always room for ameliorations? :-), but overall, 
it works well.

> The new gui, that we are working on, provides a section browser at the
> left side of the package list. Would this make things easier for you?
>
> Here is a screen shot:
>
> https://geekwg.dyndns.org/~renate/synaptic-trunk.jpg

This is very interesting, and it made me think to a new way to use the current 
Synaptic for upgrades : instead of using the "View / Status tree" view to get 
all at once all packages that can be upgraded, do a "View / Section Tree" and 
apply the "Upgradable" filter, so you get a complete list of upgraded 
packages breaked down by category. This will make things easier, thanks :-)

But about the "Upgrade all KDE package" task, the one problem is that the 
debian "KDE" category does not contains all KDE packages... For instance, the 
kmail package is in the "Email" category, not in the KDE one...

> Thanks for your input and suggestions,

Thanks for listening. It really helps as a user to know that developers care 
about user feedback!

Guillaume Pratte