Comment 21 for bug 1021960

Hi!
Aptd can do some things faster by handling the cache smarter and - because it does not try to be distro-agnostic - can rely on client tools accessing the Apt db directly, while PackageKit sends everything over a DBus connection.
We're working on making it possible for PackageKit to execute multiple actions at the same time (e.g. run GetDetails() while a InstallPackages() transaction is running), this resulted in rewriting large parts of the backend API.
For packages which require removal of other packages, Aptcc has mechanisms and that works really well at time. (introduced a loong time ago with the Simulate* methods) Downgrading packages is not yet possible, but planned. (we just haven't had a user who asked for this yet, so it has a lower priority ^^)
Aptcc is excellent at time, and it is one of the best-maintained backends PK has. Kudos to Daniel! Btw, I wonder where Sebastian Heinlein (glatzor) is to comment on this issue.... Nobody seems to have seen him for weeks...
Anyway, I filed the PK breakage as bug #1023953 , so PK installations should work fine again soon.
Regarding Xapian, let's see what we'll have soon. Writing the generator is on my todo-list, and if there are no other more important changes to do on the Software Center, I'll work on that soon. (And probably in Vala, not sure about the language yet) - right now, SQL is a viable solution too. (It's a pity AppStream progressed so slowly...)
If Ubuntu Quantal gets PackageKit 0.8.x (one PK from the 0.8 series), we'll have lots of great new features for everyone to test. But this step will need coordination with people at Ubuntu, otherwise it will break your compat-layer. (need to find someone responsible for making these decisions later, when 0.8.x is ready)