aptdaemon should have functions for editing apt config

[Andrew]

aptdaemon should have functions so that the apt config can be edited. An example of where this would be needed in in software-properties, when a user can edit the update frequency - this is stored as a config option in apt's config.

[Sebastian Heinlein (glatzor)]

Perhaps using the properties of interface of org.debian.apt seems to be a good idea. But should we map the apt config parameters to human readable names or allow full access all settings?

[Andrew (and471)]

I would suggest access to all settings so that a developer can easily switch from using apt_pkg.Config to using aptdaemon for this purpose in a quick and easy way.

[Olof Kindgren (flamingolof)]

I'm thinking that it could be a security risk to expose all settings directly. It's also difficult to give the action a meaningful name for the policykit dialog. On the other hand, it's not very user-friendly to have thousands of different actions that needs to be confirmed one by one, but I see that as the lesser of two evils.

I'm thinking of porting software-properties to use aptdaemon, as it is one of the few remaining apt related ubuntu programs.
Therefore I would like to see functions implemented at least. If it's of any interest, I can compile a list of those functions

[Sebastian Heinlein (glatzor)]

Nice to hear from you again Olof, have you ever chatted with Andrew? He would also wants to make use of aptdaemon in software-properties. So it could be a good place for cooperation.

I would suggest to only add one new privilege: change-apt-config. (we removed and merged a lot of privileges recently and I would like to avoid too much fragmentation). In the past we often used PolicyKit dialogs as confirmation dialogs but this is wrong.

The message to the user could be "To change package manager settings, you have to authenticate". The granted privilege would be kept until the end of the software-properties session. In the worst case software-properties would ask for two privilges: change-respositories and change-apt-config. (update-cache doesn't require any authentication anymore).

What do you think?

[Andrew (and471)]

Hi Olof I must speak to you in the future :)

@Sebastien
Sounds good, however (and this should be on a different bug report), I am conscious of the fact we don't want too many separate privileges as otherwise software-properties could be asking for a password 5 or 6 times.