[maemo-developers] How to use extras-testing correctly?

[From: Marius Vollmer]

"Stoppa Igor (Nokia-D/Helsinki)" <Igor.Stoppa at nokia.com> writes:

> It's not desire for control here, only for quality.
> Please remember that this thing still runs on battery.

And the iPhone runs on what?  Steve Jobs, err, bodily fluids? :)

Anyway, of course this is also about control: quality control.  The
difference with Apple is that there is no dictator built into the
maemo.org processes, or into the platform.

It will be a painful decision and will hopefully not be necessary, but
if Maemo Extras isn't doing the job that people expect from it, they can
rally together and 'fork' the whole thing by setting up their own
repositories.

The only difference between Maemo Extras and such a new-world repository
is that Maemo Extras is pre-configured when you buy your device from
Nokia (but maybe not when you buy it from someone else), and the
new-world repo needs to be added explicitly, which takes as much as one
click on a .install file.

But then again, Maemo Extras needs to be enabled explicitly, which might
be harder than clicking on a link after all.

> In the end it will be Nokia brand to get damaged if some app is
> available to the user for download and it literally sucks the battery
> dry without warning.

Users are warned a-plenty; now they even have to tick a checkbox to
confirm that the app they are about to install might harm the device.

> And, from user perspective, you do want to have someone to certify
> that your device will not be killed by the app.

Technically, packages in Maemo Extras are not 'certified'.  Those in
"Nokia Application" are certified, and you can install them without
being reminded that 90% of all software is crap.