Overview

• Launchpad entry: https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/soyuz/+spec/soyuz-ppa-index-ui

• Created: 2009-08-21 by MichaelNelson

• Contributors: Michael Nelson, Julian Edwards, Celso Providelo, Martin Pool, William Grant.

• Depends on: n/a

Overall Summary

Summary: As far as I understand, the current PPA index page has evolved from an initial requirement serve developers and packagers - whose main PPA needs are focused on building and testing packages.

Over time, we have seen a gradual shift to also serve the needs of PPA users - people who just want to use the software provided by a PPA.

As a result, the PPA index page has become quite complicated - trying to provide simple instructions for adding the PPA to your system, indicating the current status of builds, filtering and paginating through packages and links to functionality to copy packages etc., all on the one interface.

We want to identify the multiple purposes and audiences of the PPA index page and refactor the UI so that both target audiences can enjoy using the page as needed.

Goal/Deliverables:

• Create a permanent wiki page for the PPA index page's purpose, audience and use-cases.

• Iterate a suitable design with feedback from community and other stake-holders.

• Implement the new PPA index page design.
• Ensure all current developer functionality is still available (copy/delete packages, status etc.)

We will know we have finished when...

• Ubuntu users who want to upgrade to a beta version of Firefox can easily identify (1) the scope of the ppa that they have found (ie. how many other packages will be affected), (2) the latest activity on the ppa (recent uploads), (3) how they can add the PPA to their system.
• Users can subscribe to be notified (RSS) of new uploads to the ppa.
• PPA owners can easily identify (1) the result of their latest actions (uploads) on the main page, and can still (2) copy/delete packages, edit dependencies etc. (from the /packages traversal)
• All users can still see detailed listing of packages at /packages

Release Note

Rationale

See purpose at SoyuzPPAIndexPage.

Use cases

See use-cases at SoyuzPPAIndexPage

Assumptions

User Interface

See current and history of design iterations at VersionThreeDotO/Soyuz/PPAUI

Implementation

Here's how I plan on breaking the task up in a pipeline:

• Copy detailed package list and related functionality to ppa/packages - this will be a new 3-0 template.
• Remove excess info/portlets from ppa index and upgrade to 3-0 template with actions menu.
• Simplify the table on the ppa index with link to detailed list.
• Add package formatter (that includes related product icon).
• System-dependent 'Adding this PPA to your system' portlet (simplified for karmic+).
• New simplified PPA Statistics portlet.
• Latest uploads side portlet (with RSS).
• (Possibly) provide a separate distro-archive-index - depending on the usefulness of the new design for distro archives.

Code Changes

Schema Changes

Migration

Unresolved issues

In this section list out any issues which are unresolved and will impact or block the implementation of this spec.