[maemo-developers] New developer tools and an Introduction

[From: Marius Vollmer]

"ext Juha Kallioinen" <juha.kallioinen at nokia.com> writes:

> ext Acadia Secure Networks wrote:
>
>> thanks for the helpful clarifications. I will make judicious use of red 
>> pill mode on my operational N800 until either a) I obtain a spare n800 
>> for experimental use, or b) the apps become stable enough to go into the 
>> blue pill repository.
>
> I can understand that. However, with these particular tools it's not 
> that much a question of the applications not being stable enough for 
> everyday use, but that most of them are only useful for and usable by 
> people that are a bit more familiar with a linux/unix system.

Yep.  Blue-pill mode does nothing to protect you from unstable or evil
applications.  The only real difference between red-pill and blue-pill
mode is about what packages are shown in the UI.  To keep some
consistency and avoid confusion, blue-pill mode will not allow you to
install packages that wouldn't be shown in the UI.

Now, the 'two levels of enlightenment' (blue and red pill) might not
be enough, as people say in this thread: there might be some people
who want to use the Application Manager to manage their software
installations, and they want to see more packages than Joe Gadget, but
they don't want to see all of them.

I'd say we should make the Application Manager better at dealing with
lots of packages, such as fixing the performance problems and add some
filtering, maybe based on debtags.  It should even be acceptable to
make a special version of the Application Manager that hackers could
install.  That way, we don't have to wrestle with getting un-official
features into the official Nokia releases.

[ I just looked at how Skype uses the Application Manager, and they
  make all the packages visible, including the libraries and l10n.
  Urks.  Looks like I need to write more docs about how you are
  supposed to do multi-package applications... 
]