[maemo-developers] Application Manager and Extras-devel: Dealing with unstable software

[From: Aniello Del Sorbo]

Hi.

There's no way to avoid developers setting up their own repositories if they
want to do it for whatever
reason they might have.
Having a "temporary repository" flag or keyword in the install file, would
help as these
developers could use a .install file that adds the temporary repositories,
install the application,
then removes the repository.

Also "external" repositories or application that comes from external ones,
could be colored
in yellow (warning), not installable ones (AM knows that) in red and
installable ones (from known
repositories) in green.
An External repository can be anything that is not from Nokia and not from
Maemo.

I have my Xournal diablo alpha version in the Extras-devel since a long time
now and I had many users
that installed it as they found the update when another application required
the extras-devel repository,
added it and left it there.

AM could also implement filters. Show All applications, Applications from
known repositories, Applications
from external repositories.

Sorry for not exposing the ideas in a better way, too late and tired. :)

Aniello


On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 10:16 PM, Simon Pickering
<S.G.Pickering at bath.ac.uk>wrote:

>
> > the unstable repository--whatever, so the user decides (perhaps with
> > the encouragement of some of their peers) to dive in, add the unstable
> > repository and install the application.
>
> Use an install file to install the application in question? Assuming
> the application needs libraries which are contained in the
> extras-devel repo, you'd need to temporarily enable that repo. My
> feeling is that the repos enabled/added as part of install files
> should be disabled immediately after the app in question has been
> added in any case, so I suggest this change is made to the way
> Application Manager handles the install files.
>
> Would that achieve the desired goal? It would require that a list of
> application install files are available (perhaps auto-generated from
> the contents of the repo, or perhaps by the author in question?)
>
> > packages origin (color coding, a small icon) and notices might also
> > help ("this package is unstable software, and may contain many
> > significant bugs, are you sure you want to install it?"), or even some
> > sort of apt pinning system to ignore certain updates.
>
> I also like the idea of flagging applications that come from somewhere
> other than Extras, and I suppose it would be possible to have an
> Updates section with Stable and Unstable candidates in it (or perhaps
> allow updates to be sorted by their origin repo - and have Extras as
> the default origin). But these are still more for power users, simply
> disabling the repo immediately after use is imo a better bet for
> unskilled "users".
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Simon
>
>
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>



-- 
anidel
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