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Mysteries in the Software Updates UI [message #331906] Sun, 28 September 2008 04:54 Go to next message
John J. Barton is currently offline John J. BartonFriend
Messages: 311
Registered: July 2009
Senior Member
Two accidental discoveries:
1) My download of eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32 is listed in Installed
Software a Eclipse SDK 3.4.0.M20080911-1700
2) The Available Software panel seems broken. I have three sites
listed in the main panel, but if I click "Manage Sites" there is about 30.

Weird,
jjb
Re: Mysteries in the Software Updates UI [message #331921 is a reply to message #331906] Mon, 29 September 2008 15:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Eclipse UserFriend
Originally posted by: eclipse-news.rizzoweb.com

On 9/28/2008 12:54 AM, John J. Barton wrote:
> Two accidental discoveries:
> 1) My download of eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32 is listed in Installed
> Software a Eclipse SDK 3.4.0.M20080911-1700
> 2) The Available Software panel seems broken. I have three sites listed
> in the main panel, but if I click "Manage Sites" there is about 30.

I can't say anything about (1) but for (2), did you notice the
checkboxes next to each entry in the Manage Sites list? That checkbox
controls "enablement" of the sites; only enabled sites show up in the
Available Software list. There's a note about it at the top of the
Manage Sites dialog.

Hope this helps,
Eric
Re: Mysteries in the Software Updates UI [message #331922 is a reply to message #331921] Mon, 29 September 2008 16:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
John J. Barton is currently offline John J. BartonFriend
Messages: 311
Registered: July 2009
Senior Member
Eric Rizzo wrote:
> On 9/28/2008 12:54 AM, John J. Barton wrote:
>> Two accidental discoveries:
>> 1) My download of eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32 is listed in Installed
>> Software a Eclipse SDK 3.4.0.M20080911-1700
>> 2) The Available Software panel seems broken. I have three sites listed
>> in the main panel, but if I click "Manage Sites" there is about 30.
>
> I can't say anything about (1) but for (2), did you notice the
> checkboxes next to each entry in the Manage Sites list? That checkbox
> controls "enablement" of the sites; only enabled sites show up in the
> Available Software list. There's a note about it at the top of the
> Manage Sites dialog.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Eric

You're right does say "The others are ignored". But my point is that I
didn't imagine this a list. What is the purpose of this list? It looks
like "eclipse-blessed URLs". To me the "available software" is a control
to "manage sites": it's a list of sites which you can use to select
updates from, and you can add to the list. The thing called "Manage
Sites" is a list I did not create and it has some but not all URLs for
eclipse update sites.

The Manage Sites panel would be really helpful if it were "Registered
Update Sites" and it downloaded a list of all available eclipse update
sites (say from an online registry). Just giving the blessed sites is
not helpful since the list does not help you pick the things you need to
install.

John
Re: Mysteries in the Software Updates UI [message #331949 is a reply to message #331922] Tue, 30 September 2008 14:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Eclipse UserFriend
Originally posted by: eclipse-news.rizzoweb.com

On 9/29/2008 12:11 PM, John J Barton wrote:
> Eric Rizzo wrote:
>> On 9/28/2008 12:54 AM, John J. Barton wrote:
>>> Two accidental discoveries:
>>> 1) My download of eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32 is listed in Installed
>>> Software a Eclipse SDK 3.4.0.M20080911-1700
>>> 2) The Available Software panel seems broken. I have three sites listed
>>> in the main panel, but if I click "Manage Sites" there is about 30.
>>
>> I can't say anything about (1) but for (2), did you notice the
>> checkboxes next to each entry in the Manage Sites list? That checkbox
>> controls "enablement" of the sites; only enabled sites show up in the
>> Available Software list. There's a note about it at the top of the
>> Manage Sites dialog.
>>
>> Hope this helps,
>> Eric
>
> You're right does say "The others are ignored". But my point is that I
> didn't imagine this a list. What is the purpose of this list? It looks
> like "eclipse-blessed URLs". To me the "available software" is a control
> to "manage sites": it's a list of sites which you can use to select
> updates from, and you can add to the list. The thing called "Manage
> Sites" is a list I did not create and it has some but not all URLs for
> eclipse update sites.
>
> The Manage Sites panel would be really helpful if it were "Registered
> Update Sites" and it downloaded a list of all available eclipse update
> sites (say from an online registry). Just giving the blessed sites is
> not helpful since the list does not help you pick the things you need to
> install.

As you can see, the complete list of sites on the Manage Sites list is
huge. I suspect the idea behind having it separate is because at any
given time you are not likely to want to see EVERY available
plugin/update from EVERY site that you have either added yourself or was
added automatically when a feature was installed (when a feature is
installed, I'm pretty sure it can contribute to this list, which is why
it is so large). I think the typical use case is expected to be that you
want to install something specific and thus Available Software is a
subset view of the total set of things that your Eclipse installation
knows about that might have updates or new plugins. That seems quite
reasonable to me.

As for an online registry, that has been brought up before. I think one
of the reasons for not having such a thing (other than the usual "No
body cares enough about it to contribute time to building and
implementing it") is because it would be a PITA to do it for
non-eclipse.org projects. EPIC is a nice web site for finding plugins,
but I would not want something of that size and uncontrolled scope being
exposed in the standard Available Updates UI - it would be overwhelming.
You cuold suggest that there be one registry just for Eclipse.org hosted
projects, but that kind of goes against the nature of Eclipse, where
contributions from the third-parties are given equal value and
importance in the ecosystem.

Eric
Re: Mysteries in the Software Updates UI [message #332182 is a reply to message #331906] Wed, 08 October 2008 19:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Susan F. McCourt is currently offline Susan F. McCourtFriend
Messages: 16
Registered: July 2009
Junior Member
John J. Barton wrote:
> Two accidental discoveries:
> 1) My download of eclipse-SDK-3.4.1-win32 is listed in Installed
> Software a Eclipse SDK 3.4.0.M20080911-1700
> 2) The Available Software panel seems broken. I have three sites
> listed in the main panel, but if I click "Manage Sites" there is about 30.
>
> Weird,
> jjb

1) That is the build id of the last maintenance build that was then
promoted to 3.4.1. I can't speak to the details, but when the update
metadata was generated for the site, it picked up this version number.

2) The extra sites in the "Manage Sites" dialog appear because some
other site (typically Ganymede) refers to "associate sites." We are
still discussing how best to represent these. The user doesn't want to
see all of these sites, yet we need to know about them. You can follow
a more detailed discussion of this in

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=234213

susan
Re: Mysteries in the Software Updates UI [message #332184 is a reply to message #332182] Wed, 08 October 2008 22:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
John J. Barton is currently offline John J. BartonFriend
Messages: 311
Registered: July 2009
Senior Member
Susan McCourt wrote:
> John J. Barton wrote:
>> 2) The Available Software panel seems broken. I have three sites
>> listed in the main panel, but if I click "Manage Sites" there is about
>> 30.
....
>
> 2) The extra sites in the "Manage Sites" dialog appear because some
> other site (typically Ganymede) refers to "associate sites." We are
> still discussing how best to represent these. The user doesn't want to
> see all of these sites, yet we need to know about them. You can follow
> a more detailed discussion of this in
>
> https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=234213
>
> susan

Thanks Susan. That bug report may be about the Manage Sites issue, but
its really hard to tell. Here are the things I was looking for:

I disagree about the "user doesn't want to see all of these sites".
The tab says "available software": show me *all* available software. You
can provide filters but don't hide the full list.
The UI is 'upside down', it shows me URLs in a small box and makes me
click each of them open to find the surprises inside. Use a big box,
expand the tree, show the bottoms and link the leafs to the sites.
Eclipse is a big wonderful system and it deserves a whole screen full of
packages! That way I have a list of available software, not a list of
some sites.
Build the tree by compatibility: 3.4.1 on top, wtp 2 and 3 below.
Allow the text of the "Installed Software" to be copied so I can
paste it. Allow it to be exported so I can import yours.

I did not see this kind of discussion in the bug report so let me
know if there is somewhere else.

John.
Re: Mysteries in the Software Updates UI [message #332198 is a reply to message #332184] Thu, 09 October 2008 16:20 Go to previous message
Susan F. McCourt is currently offline Susan F. McCourtFriend
Messages: 16
Registered: July 2009
Junior Member
> I did not see this kind of discussion in the bug report so let me know
> if there is somewhere else.

Hi, John.
Oh, yeah! There are a lot of discussions going on in a lot of different
bug reports. If you do a bugzilla search in the RT->Equinox->p2
component for bugs with [ui] in the title, you'll see many/most of your
suggestions in different bugs.

Did you know you can change the available software page to view by
category or by name? This way you don't have to look at the sites at
all, you can see the master list of available software, either sorted by
category or by name of the software. That combined with a bug that
requests showing the site associated with an item would give you the
upside down look you want.

Some other things to read/comment on: the basic organization of the UI
is changing right now (as of last nights N-build) as described in
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_UI_3.5_workflows. That page also has
links to bugs for discussion of particular topics.

> Build the tree by compatibility: 3.4.1 on top, wtp 2 and 3 below.

This is a tough one as it requires resolving the various
dependencies/requirements before ever showing the list, and we already
have performance issues. But that suggestion probably belongs in
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=226577

In general, this is a *very good* time to be giving overall feedback as
we've been looking at our users, workflows, and what kinds of things are
going to help the UI for 3.5. Current 3.5 milestone plan is at
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Equinox_p2_UI_Plan.

If your suggestions land in a bug report they won't get lost...

susan
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