Distribution/Package Management

Revision as of 00:13, 2 July 2011

All software on a MeeGo is divided into RPM packages, which can be installed, upgraded, or removed. This part describes how to manage packages using both zypper and the PackageKit suite of graphical package management tools.

Package Management Architecture

The whole stack has RPM at the lowest level.RPM is type of package management system. On top of RPM is Zypp software management library for RPM-based systems. It's also know by it‘s package name, libzypp.

on top of libzypp, there are various user interfaces or Package Management UI, like Zypper and YaST, the PackageKit Zypp backend, which enables the use of any PackageKit application.

zypper

package && pattern && patch

Package - a type of file format where software programs and installation material is grouped together Update & Patch - Update is a single replacement (newer version of a) package, but Patch is information about one or multi packages updates. patterns - just like the group concept in yum repo. It’s a group of packages belong to one type. Such as Graphics, development, etc

Search Packages

 zypper search --help

List Packages

 zypper search

Display Package Information

 zypper 

Installing Packages

 zypper install pkgname

Removing Packages

 zypper remove pkgname

PackageKit

Update Packages with Gnome PackageKit

Gnome PackageKit can be available on NetBook and IVI.

Updating Packages with Software Update =

In the Software Updates window, all available updates are listed along with the names of the packages being updated (minus the .rpm suffix, but including the CPU architecture), a short summary of the package, and, usually, short descriptions of the changes the update provides. Any updates you do not wish to install can be de-selected here by unchecking the checkbox corresponding to the update.

Using Add/Remove Software =

PackageKit's Software Update GUI window is a separate application from its Add/Remove Software application, although the two have intuitively similar interfaces.

Manage packages with PackageKit command line tool

How to report a bug

PackageKit or Package Manager UI bug

For Package Management component issue, please catch more logs and attach them when you reporting a bug. For PackageKit or Package Manager UI issue Steps to get logs:

• Setup system Environment
• Install PackageKit-debuginfo, libzypp-debuginfo, which should match the version of PackageKit/libzypp
• start packagekitd manually. In one terminal execute:

   #killall -9 packagekitd
   #/usr/libexec/packagekitd -v >packagekitd.log 

• In another terminal execute your script/command to reproduce bug.
• Then you'll get packagekitd.log and /var/log/pk_backend_zypp, and these two log files are very important to fix bug in the first time. Please attach them.

zypper command bug

For Zypper issue while you using zypper command, using the following steps to get logs:

• Setup system Environment

  #rm /var/log/zypper.log -f

• set log level and reproduce bug using zypper

   #export ZYPP_LIBSAT_FULLLOG=1
   #zypper xxx yyy

or using the following log level

   #export ZYPP_FULLLOG=1
   #zypper xxx yyy

• check /var/log/zypper.log and attach them. The log generated using ZYPP_LIBSAT_FULLLOG would be very large(40M), but includde more information about packages. while the log generated using ZYPP_FULLLOG is smaller (1M).