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

[From: gary liquid]

There should be a whitelist of applications to use from -devel with a method
to add or select packages from within it.

If I *choose* to get involved in the xournal beta testing and want to obtain
it from -devel this should not effect the testing status of other
applications which I am not focusing upon nor testing.

This way only xournal will be listed as coming from -devel and nothing else.

If at a later date I also wish to test out another cool application I could
simply add that as well, but at no time would I get unexpected dangerous
updates.

gary (lcuk on #maemo)

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:04 PM, Aniello Del Sorbo <anidel at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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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>> maemo-developers at maemo.org
>> https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
>>
>
>
>
> --
> anidel
>
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>
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