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

[From: Sebastian 'CrashandDie' Lauwers]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:46 PM, gary liquid <liquid at gmail.com> wrote:
> i do not think there is ever a perfect way for anything.
> there are many points which intersect and by discussion we will find that
> common ground :)

Another ugly trick (hey, it's what I'm good at, coming up with dirty
ideas) would be to have dynamic repositories. Now I know, it sounds
crazy, just bear with me. This would only require server side
scripting (mostly), and would allow for content updates directly to
the end user, without having to manually check for the .install files.

The way I see it, user lambda wants to see what's flying in the latest
version of xournal, he adds the -devel repository for xournal. He gets
the updates, no problems with dependencies (provided they are
available from his current list of repositories). In case he wants to
go back to the stable version, he simply removes the -devel
repository, and after a refresh, his tablet is stable again.

Obviously, most users would only use the standard Maemo repository,
the "dynamic" repositories only need to be updated when a package goes
through one of the builders, and can be part of the compilation
process. This does impose as constraint that each and every package
will have its own repository, unless we make the builders "project
aware", so that a specific project can tag multiple packages to be
part of one single repository.

Hey, I warned you, I'm dirty.

My 2p,

S.

-- 
question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;
      -- Wm. Shakespeare