useability

[Mikus Grinbergs]

On SuSE, the principal package manager I use is 'smart --gui'
- mainly because it provides the information I want (e.g.,
View -> Hide old  to display what's new at the repositories).

Had occasion to try to update a SuSE 10.0 system to which few
updates had been applied in half a year (the majority of the
available newer packages involved KDE 3.5 replacing KDE 3.4).

First try (update, mark, apply):  smart downloaded over a
hundred packages, but did not install any because 'prepare'
did not like the *key* for the mozilla depository.

Second try (went into marked list, unmarked the mozilla
packages, clicked on apply):  smart had already downloaded
the packages, so it went directly into install (or whatever
it's called).  It filled up its display with package installs
until it got to the bottom.  Then it sat there.  'top' did
not show 'smart' running.  After 15+ minutes of waiting, I
did a 'kill -9' against the smart process.

Third try ('cd /var/lib/smart/packages'):  Did 'rpm -U'
and 'rpm -i' - they installed a third of the packages.
Did 'rpm -F' - it installed the rest [including mozilla].
Did 'smart clean'.

Last thing (smart --gui update, mark, apply):  smart found
two packages it could update, and downloaded and installed
them.


BOTTOM LINE:

 -  I understand that "integrity of the 'transaction'" is gospel
    to the smart developers, but I did not appreciate smart not
    even trying to update KDE, just because it balked at a 'key
    value' problem with the mozilla repository.

    Having to manually "parse" the 'marked' list is not my idea
    of "easy to use".


 -  And what is an __user__ supposed to do when the smart output
    (while smart is supposed to be doing something) has remained
    unchanged for 15+ minutes ?

    [My guess is that smart went off the rails because it had
     bitten off more packages than it could chew.]

    Having a "look ma, no hands" human-computer interface is fine
    as long as nothing unexpected happens.  But when it does, the
    user is stranded.


mikus  (using 0.42-8 for SuSE 10.0 from the guru repository)