Re: N770 OS2007 hacker edition made it to the title page of Linux Weekly News

On 4/12/07, Laurent GUERBY <laurentguerby.net> wrote:
>
>         Unable to install: some application packages
required for the
>         installation are missing.
>
> Given that's just some misconfigured/misdocumented
third party repo/deb,
> you can get those messages in any deb/apt based Linux
current
> distribution so that's quite unfair to the "app
manager" application.

It doesn't matter what the technical cause is, the
repository
situation is a mess. Debian and Ubuntu don't have this
problem by
better centralising, delegating and testing their packages
through a
single build system.

I worry that the Extras Repo is both too hard to upload to
*and* too
unregulated. For example, instead of porting a library like
libsoup
once, it's ported by Canola, it's ported for GPE etc. The
end-user
then suffers the problems caused by this lack of
co-ordination.

Yes, the original LWN article suggests it's the Application
Manager's
fault, but getting that corrected to point out the chaotic
situation
of an ever-expanding set of (potentially incompatible)
repositories is
a minor difference in an otherwise valid point.

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrewbleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
_______________________________________________
maemo-developers mailing list
maemo-developersmaemo.org
h
ttps://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers

Andrew Flegg schrieb:
> It doesn't matter what the technical cause is, the
repository
> situation is a mess. Debian and Ubuntu don't have this
problem by
> better centralising, delegating and testing their
packages through a
> single build system.
> 
> I worry that the Extras Repo is both too hard to upload
to *and* too
> unregulated. For example, instead of porting a library
like libsoup
> once, it's ported by Canola, it's ported for GPE etc.
The end-user
> then suffers the problems caused by this lack of
co-ordination.

There are three different developers who independently
ported ScummVM to
Maemo by now. Also, I fear that soon there will be apps that
run on
previous IT OS distributions but never make it to the
current release.

It's also confusing that many 3rd party applications never
actually find
their way in the central repository, be they official or
non-supported.

(My Ubuntu desktop box also uses some non-official sources,
but its
sources-list is still far shorter than the one on my N800.)

Maemo needs a release manager.

The release manager should coordinate that interesting apps
find
packagers who take care of making them available for all
current flavors
of the IT OS distributions.

Regards,

Hanno
_______________________________________________
maemo-developers mailing list
maemo-developersmaemo.org
h
ttps://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers

>It doesn't matter what the technical cause is, the
repository 
>situation is a mess.

Proposal to Andrew and other developers concerned about this
issue: can
you please agree on a proposal and file it as a feature
request in
bugzilla? More than one paragraph and less than, say, the
equivalent of
one page? Describing what do you think that needs
improvement in the
current situation and how you would improve it.

If the proposal makes sense we will add it as it is to the
roadmap. We
still might want to discuss some details    but what
I want to say is
that a proposal from our side will help getting a (better?)
solution
implemented (sooner?). You might want to suggest progressive
steps, that
would help us starting soon with the simpler changes while
we try to
solve whatever implies more complexity.

Quim

Long PS:

This proposal applies to anybody willing to improve any
element of the
development platform. Well formulated feature requests filed
in bugzilla
have by default a lot more chances to be implemented. It is
my
responsibility to answer these requests about the
development platform,
and it is in my capacity to push the ones that make sense in
our
strategy.

Remember that public roadmap? We have done a lot of progress
opening the
planning process of the development platform. I only need to
find some
time to document and publish. In the meantime, feature
requests in
bugzilla is the way to go. Thanks!
_______________________________________________
maemo-developers mailing list
maemo-developersmaemo.org
h
ttps://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers