[maemo-developers] Diablo, do we need a separate repository?

[From: Graham Cobb]

On Monday 05 May 2008 12:42:33 Niels Breet wrote:
> Do we need a separate extras repository for diablo or should we just add a
> link to chinook?

I strongly believe they need to be separate.

The main reason isn't from the point of view of Diablo, it is from the point 
of view of Chinook.  The issue isn't whether chinook apps will work on diablo 
(and it is good news that they will) -- it is whether diablo apps will work 
on chinook!

If there are *any* library changes (you mentioned libssl but I *really* hope 
there will be an up to date version of glib!) then apps built for Diablo will 
not work on Chinook.  So, you have the problem that users still running 
chinook will find that apps in the chinook repository will not install!

> By linking the two, developers don't have to upload their packages to both
> repositories.

But the autobuilder makes this irrelevant.  Developers can submit the exact 
same source package to both autobuilders if they want to (the submission 
assistant can even do it automatically for you by default).  And you can 
initially populate the diablo repository (even before anyone outside Nokia 
has a diablo device) just by running the autobuilder on all the source 
packages in the chinook repository (and, if you could automate sending any 
failures to the maintainer from the package that would be even better!).

> What do you think? Please give us your ideas, pros/cons.

The autobuilder makes this sort of decision very easy to decide -- always go 
for a separate repository for every change in the Nokia released firmware.  
As long as the Application manager on the device has enough information to 
automatically select the right one it is transparent to the user and the 
autobuilder can handle the issue for developers.

In fact, the autobuilder actually makes it impossible to make a single 
repository work in the future: it becomes impossible for me to deliberately 
build my "diablo" software against chinook libraries or against old libraries 
of other community packages.  For example, if library libAAA links against 
libssl then the autobuilder would insist on building a version which won't 
run on chinook (presumably Nokia does not allow a chinook package to upgrade 
libssl), but if I was building it myself I would build it against the chinook 
version so it could run on both.  I do this today for gregale: the gregale 
version of GPE is deliberately built against the 3.0 SDK (not 3.2, where 
the "gregale" codename points).

Graham