Call for testing/feedback: Cockpit OS update feature

[Martin Pitt]

Hello all,

I've been drafting and implementing a new Cockpit feature for providing a
"Software Updates" page for "classic" yum/dnf/apt based systems (the current
one is for Atomic OSTree only). This uses PackageKit to retrieve update
information and install packages, and I've now tested it on Fedora 25, CentOS
7, Debian 8, Debian testing, and Ubuntu 16.04.  It looks like [2] for me on
Fedora 25 or like [3] on a Debian testing installation from a few weeks ago
(thus there are tons of updates available, and Debian changelogs tend to be
much more detailled).

This is now sufficiently useful and robust for getting some wider feedback and
testing. For easier and faster development it's currently a standalone
project/repository [4], it includes a README how to install it:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/cockpit
    cd ~/.local/share/cockpit
    git clone https://github.com/martinpitt/cockpit-os-updates.git
    npm install
    npm run compile

If you don't have "npm", you need to install it first with "sudo yum install npm".

Feedback I'm looking for:

- How does the UI and update process work and feel for you? Does it cause
   bad appearance/rendering or visual glitches or even actual upgrade failures
   for you? (please include screenshots).

- Is there some missing feature which is crucial for a first public
   version/inclusion into Cockpit? Note that the spec talks about configuring
   automatic updates, but that will not be in the first version.

- I'm *very* new to React and JS at large, so I'd appreciate some commentary
   on the code for bad patterns/style.

Known issues:

- The tooltips for package names (package summary) and CVEs (CVE description)
   are not Cockpit-styled. This is a limitation of being a standalone module (I
   can't use Cockpit's tooltip React component) and will be fixed when
   including this into the Cockpit tree.

- Applying updates currently looks a bit simple-minded. This hasn't gone
   through a Garret-level design process yet, I just threw something initial
   together (progress bar and currently processed package).

- On Ubuntu 16.04 or Debian 8 (sorry, forgot which one) there are no
   changelogs. That's a limitation of what PackageKit can give us.

Thank you in advance!

Pitti

[1] https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit/wiki/Feature:-System-Updates-for-...
[2] http://piware.de/tmp/os-updater-20170523.png
[3] http://picpaste.com/pics/updates-debian-POB2UySL.1495548975.png
[4] https://github.com/martinpitt/cockpit-os-updates
[5] https://github.com/martinpitt/cockpit-os-updates/blob/master/os-updates.jsx

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2017-05-23 at 16:25 +0200, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've been drafting and implementing a new Cockpit feature for providing a
> "Software Updates" page for "classic" yum/dnf/apt based systems (the current
> one is for Atomic OSTree only). This uses PackageKit to retrieve update
> information and install packages, and I've now tested it on Fedora 25, CentOS
> 7, Debian 8, Debian testing, and Ubuntu 16.04.

Thanks for working on this! I may be way off here, but I seem to recall
hearing some rumblings lately about making PackageKit go away. It might
be worth checking in with the devs on that just in case I'm not
entirely wrong...

[Martin Pitt]

Hello Adam,

Adam Williamson [2017-05-23  9:00 -0700]:
> Thanks for working on this! I may be way off here, but I seem to recall
> hearing some rumblings lately about making PackageKit go away. It might
> be worth checking in with the devs on that just in case I'm not
> entirely wrong...

Hmm, I spoke to Richard some days ago about some PK bug, and he didn't mention
anything like that. But I'll ask again.

We'll also use it for finding/installing "server apps" soon, and it's the basis
for software installation GUIs in several distros, so that would be kind of a
bummer..

Thanks,

Martin

[Josh Berkus]

On 05/23/2017 07:25 AM, Martin Pitt wrote:
> This is now sufficiently useful and robust for getting some wider feedback and
> testing. For easier and faster development it's currently a standalone
> project/repository [4], it includes a README how to install it:
> mkdir -p ~/.local/share/cockpit
> cd ~/.local/share/cockpit
> git clone https://github.com/martinpitt/cockpit-os-updates.git
> npm install
> npm run compile
>
> If you don't have "npm", you need to install it first with "sudo yum install npm".

This brings up an idea: it would really really help with user testing if
we could build test versions like this one (maybe from PRs) into
containers and make them available with a tag.

It's pretty trivial for me, or other users, to install an alternate
version of Cockpit via container. Running npm compile (even inside a
container) is kind of a pain.

I'll give building this one as a cockpit/ws container a shot.

[Stef Walter]

On 23.05.2017 21:08, Josh Berkus wrote:
> On 05/23/2017 07:25 AM, Martin Pitt wrote:
> > This is now sufficiently useful and robust for getting some wider feedback and
> > testing. For easier and faster development it's currently a standalone
> > project/repository [4], it includes a README how to install it:
> > mkdir -p ~/.local/share/cockpit
> > cd ~/.local/share/cockpit
> > git clone https://github.com/martinpitt/cockpit-os-updates.git
> > npm install
> > npm run compile
> >
> > If you don't have "npm", you need to install it first with "sudo yum install npm".
>
> This brings up an idea: it would really really help with user testing if
> we could build test versions like this one (maybe from PRs) into
> containers and make them available with a tag.
>
> It's pretty trivial for me, or other users, to install an alternate
> version of Cockpit via container. Running npm compile (even inside a
> container) is kind of a pain.
>
> I'll give building this one as a cockpit/ws container a shot.

Yeah, that would be cool.

Let us know (here on the list) when you do end up building such a
container (I imagine with systemd, NetworkManager, and friends inside it).

If it's not too hacky, we could have our bots do this automatically for
each Cockpit pull request.

Cheers,

Stef