Extend service capabilities to allow GUI clients

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi there,

I like the idea of communicating with a central service that does all the 
installation stuff as it offers some more possibilities for my users. I have 
successfully created a small GUI application allowing a user to click on a 
"Install software"-button which tells the service to "Execute" wpkg.js, so a 
reboot is not necessarily needed. However, I'd like to give my users some more 
info about what will be done when they click on the button. One thing I'd like 
to display is a list of packages that would be installed/updated/removed. To 
achive this, I'd have to execute wpkg.js myself with the /Query parameter set, 
parse it's output and build that list by myself. This, however, would break my 
security settings as all my users would need access to the wpkg-share on my 
server, which is currently only readable for a dedicated user that is used by 
the WPKG-gp service.

I was thinking about this stuff and would like to suggest the following 
enhancements:
- Let the WPKG-gp service execute the "query-for-what-I-am-interested-in"-stuff 
on a regular basis, say all five minutes (one should be able to configure this 
time). The service should parse the output, build a list of packages to 
install/upgrade/remove and store it internally.
- Add a new "pipe"-command "Query" or someting that a client could issue. If 
the service receives this command, it should return the list of packages, 
including their specific status. One package per line, including old and new 
revision (on upgrade) or currect revision only (on installed and remove). There 
should be some kind or status marker in the line.

I am willing to create the client frontend and add it here for the public to 
download. However, I am not a C++ or something else programmer. My language of 
choice is the AutoIT scripting language.

Regards

Original issue reported on code.google.com by [email protected] on 10 Feb 2011 at 10:15