[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] ipkg vs dpkg

[From: Russell Nelson]

Matthew Allum writes:
 > Surely this isn't a fair comparison as the packages in Debian 2.2
 > arn't 'tuned' to embedded use ( i.e include docs, .la files etc etc ).
 > You'd be better comparing udebs that make up D-I or something.

I'm only talking about the overhead of the package manager, not the
contents of the packages themselves.

 > Also I dont know how you make numbers out of ipkg's lack of any real
 > maintainership, constant instability ( likely due to former ), wierd
 > versioning scheme, memory issues and horrific 'UI' ( see ipkg -h ).

Those are problems with ipkg, to be sure, but dpkg has its own
usability issues, and needs a front-end (apt-get) to have ipkg's
functionality.

There is no really great package manager for a small-storage system.
How do we get there from here?

 > PS; note; Im not saying dpkg is ideal for embedded systems here, just
 > that ipkg is not ideal either ( maybe it used to be but not so much
 > nowadays ).

Repeat after me: "the 770 is not an embedded system".  It is a small
computer with neither a qwerty keyboard nor a big hard drive, nor a
really fast processor.

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