[Bug 795851] Re: software-center doesn't look inside packages for icons

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

When you look at a list of applications in USC, it needs to be able to
show the icons (and the human-readable application names, and categories
and keywords) for all of them, regardless of whether they are installed.
You may be looking at hundreds or even thousands of packages at once,
and that list may change in a fraction of a second as you change the
search text. So if I understand your suggestion correctly, this bug
report is not valid, because downloading and unzipping all of those
packages on-the-fly to look at the icons inside would be far too slow.

That's why app-install-data exists. It contains extracted and cached
*copies* of, not supplements for, the application icons in all packages
regardless of whether they are installed, so USC can display them
quickly.

You are correct, though, that the existence of app-install-data is
evidence of a problem. The problem is that because app-install-data is a
package like any other, it needs to be updated and uploaded manually,
making it unreliable. For example, you mention seeing an application's
icon show up in USC only after the application is installed. That seldom
happens, but when it does, it's usually because app-install-data is out
of date. Similarly, you describe the old icon being shown for an update
with a new icon; if that happens, it's because the update to the app-
install-data package isn't installed before the update to the
application itself.

The solution is for individual archives to automatically update an index
of icons, human-readable names, and categories on each upload, in the
same way that they update Packages.gz with its index of package names,
dependencies, and descriptions. The task of fixing that for Ubuntu
archives and PPAs is described at
<https://dev.launchpad.net/ArchiveIndex>.

If you have the time and skill to help out with that, that would be
awesome. <https://dev.launchpad.net/> Meanwhile, if you've seen a
particular case of an icon showing up only after the application is
installed, or being different before and after, please report that at
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/app-install-data-ubuntu> (or
use the command "ubuntu-bug app-install-data"). Finally, you suggest it
would help if application developers and packagers could easily learn
how the icon caching system works. For pointers on reporting a bug about
that (or improving it yourself), see
<http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=881>. Thanks!

** Changed in: software-center (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Invalid

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/795851

Title:
  software-center doesn't look inside packages for icons

Status in “software-center” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: software-center

  When displaying package lists, or information about a specific
  package, software-center looks in a number of directories for a
  suitable icon to display for that package, e.g. the /usr/share/pixmaps
  and /usr/share/app-install/icons directories.  It does not, however,
  look inside the package itself at the files it will install, for icons
  that would be installed into those same directories.  This means that
  an installed program will get an icon displayed (if it installed the
  icon itself) but an uninstalled program will not.  Additionally, when
  upgrading, the *old* icon will be displayed, rather than the new
  replacement icon in the package.

  Also, none of the icon behaviour appears to be documented anywhere.  I
  gleaned the above by reading the python source code.  Documenting the
  icon behaviour would allow developers and packagers to know how to put
  icons into their packages (icons they use for their projects and web
  sites) in order to have them displayed correctly in GUI-based package
  installer programs, such as software-center.  (I expected to find
  something in the Debian Policy Manual, but it only speaks about app
  menus.)

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