[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Re: Repositories

[From: Carlos Guerreiro]

> > Well ... I am one of those users caught a bit by doing an "apt-get
> > upgrade" (more specifically I took the Red Pill and upgraded some
> > core packages) and expecting it to "do the right thing". I didn't
> > get the constant rebooting but I am experiencing random application
> > crashes now. 

Yes, that was a screw up. Upgrading to Sardine is not "officially"
supported, it is experimental at the moment. However, upgrading from the
Maemo 2.0 repository should have resulted in nothing whatsoever
happening, since the Maemo 2.0 repo should have had the very same
versions as in the device. We hope not to repeat the same mistake next
time.

> > 
> > "The right thing" that I was expecting was:
> > - Upgrade core packages with newer more stable more up to date
> > packages with possible security fixes and functionality fixes but no
> > great leaps in versions

That was never the plan for Maemo 2.0. It was meant to be an immutable
snapshot. One of the reasons was simply that many packages are not
packaged to upgrade correctly and the package database is broken in that
regard too.
This broken Maemo 2.0 impacts Sardine too, since Sardine is using it as
a baseline and requires packages in it (but not in the device).  That's
probably going to change soon, by making the Sardine repository self-
sufficient.

> > - any unstable, in-development packages for the next version of the
> > OS would be in a separate repository component that would need to be
> > specificially enabled

Yup, that's Sardine.

> > - once a new stable branch was developed, I could use apt-get
> > upgrade to upgrade my 770 to it after changing the repository info
> > over 

That's the idea with Sardine, however we are still not there, plus the
project is experimental and limited to a subset of Maemo (Hildon
Application Framework). If everything goes well and Sardine proves
itself a success, it could be enlarged to cover the whole Maemo scope.

> > I understand now that the repositories are not arranged that way for
> > the 770 ... I just wish they were.

So do why

> > I also have to figure out which packages to downgrade in order for
> > my 770 to become stable again. Maybe a reflash is the simplest way. 

Yes, a reflash is the way