I am proud to announce the first alpha release for Muon Suite 2.0. The Muon Suite is a set of package management utilities for Debian-based Linux distributions built on KDE technologies.Packages for Kubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal” are available in the QApt PPA.
2.0? A rewrite?
Nope! I had to make changes to LibQApt that would prevent programs compiled against LibQApt 1.x from being able to run or compile against LibQApt 2.x. Muon Suite 2.0 simply means that it uses LibQApt 2.0. (In developer speak, this release breaks both ABI and API. It’s mostly source-compatible, but will require a few changes/additions in programs using LibQApt) I’ll write a separate post about LibQApt2 explaining the changes in detail. Most of my efforts this cycle have been towards LibQApt2, but this doesn’t mean that there’s nothing new on the Muon front. (In fact quite a bit of work was done simply with the port to QApt 2.0)
KNewStuff3 support
Both the Muon Software Center and Muon Discover now support installing things via KDE’s KNewStuff framework version 3. This is the framework that allows developers to publish scripted plugins such as Plasma widgets to the world. Currently the Muon Software Center and Muon Discover have categories for Plasma widgets (as well as plugins for the Comics plasmoid) utilizing KNS3. Suggestions for further categories using KNS3 are welcome.
Aleix wrote about this feature in detail at hisblog. As he wrote, the work in supporting multiple resource types opens up the possibility of new backends. (Perhaps a backend that grabs data from AppStream in the future) Exciting stuff.
Muon Discover UI Improvements
A lot of work has gone in to improving the user interface of Muon Discover by my colleaguesAurélien Gâteau andAleix Pol Gonzalez. Muon Discover now integrates much better with the rest of KDE, and is in general easier to use.
Changelogs
Detailed changelogs for LibQApt and Muon can be foundhereandhere, respectively.
Plans for 2.1
Even though 2.0 has just been released, we’ve had some things on the back burner waiting for 2.1 that are already done. A plan for the feature set of 2.1 can be found here.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE
