About Sharing

[Pleng]

I would suggest, to keep things simple, that there is just ONE pnd with ALL the large libraries, maintained by the OPT. Requests for including large libraries made to the OPT.

If we call the pnd, say, system, and have sequential versions of it (for when more libs are added), pnd_run can check to see if System v1 (or whatever), specified in PXML, is present before running. If not, the OS can prompt the user to download said PND to SD1 or SD2.

 

[Pleng]

You know what, I've changed my mind.

Having any PND rely on another is sucky. It defeats the whole purpose of the PND system. Here's my new idea:

There's, what, 90Mb free on the NAND after a fresh install? I filed a bug report showing that around 70Mb of the NAND is wasted with Python demos and the like. Get rid of them. That's 160Mb space available.

Also get rid of abiword, gnumeric, evince, aroura or midori (keep one, so that a user can get online to download stuff), squeeze, and anything else that isn't essential to the base OS. Move them into a utilities PND, downloadable from the appstore. This should free up another reasonable chunk of space. Use the space gained to put these large shared libraries directly into the base OS.

It makes far more sense to a user to have to download a PND full of utilities than it does to have to keep both the firmware AND a system.pnd up to date.

 

[Caine]

As long as several apps are from the same developer and the apps themselves aren't too large, you can just stick them all into a single PND. We do have support for multiple applications.

Maybe it should be made simple to merge/unmerge PNDs?

 

[God Ginrai]

You know what, I've changed my mind.

Having any PND rely on another is sucky. It defeats the whole purpose of the PND system. Here's my new idea:

There's, what, 90Mb free on the NAND after a fresh install? I filed a bug report showing that around 70Mb of the NAND is wasted with Python demos and the like. Get rid of them. That's 160Mb space available.

Also get rid of abiword, gnumeric, evince, aroura or midori (keep one, so that a user can get online to download stuff), squeeze, and anything else that isn't essential to the base OS. Move them into a utilities PND, downloadable from the appstore. This should free up another reasonable chunk of space. Use the space gained to put these large shared libraries directly into the base OS.

It makes far more sense to a user to have to download a PND full of utilities than it does to have to keep both the firmware AND a system.pnd up to date.

... They want the device to be fully functional even when you don't have an SD plugged in. What you are suggesting would be horrible for the standard user.

-God Ginrai

 

[Pleng]

Making PNDs rely on each other is horrible.

Even without removing the utils there's plenty of space to be used for libs (once the unrequired files have been removed). But I really don't see why the device needs to be usable without SD cards. I mean they aren't exactly expensive. Besides which, who in their right mind would buy a £300 device and limit themselves to the 512Mb built in NAND?

 

[God Ginrai]

Making PNDs rely on each other is horrible.

Isn't that the same as linux applications relying on libraries?

-God Ginrai

 

[Pleng]

Bingo. And avoiding that is exactly why the PND system was created...

 

[DaveC]

Why wouldn't the idea of keeping common libs in a directory in appdata work?

That seems better than putting things on the NAND.

Yes I agree keeping all of those python demos and junk on the NAND seems dumb. I don't even want all of that crap anywhere let alone on NAND. I think NAND should be for system essential files, not unneeded demos.

 

[Pleng]

Why wouldn't the idea of keeping common libs in a directory in appdata work?

It would work. But it would hardly be intuitive for users. The idea of the PND system is that you shouldn't NEED to install something to make something else work.

Just put the larger commonly used libraries on the NAND, make it part of the firmware. No confusion there. Owners of portable devices are used to some apps needing the latest firmware to run. They are not used to 'please put these files in appdata before you use this app', or 'please make sure you have PND x on your SD card before you run this app'. Things like timidity and KDE libs are going to be used by enough apps to warrent a place in the firmware. More obscure large libraries, which are only going to be used by one or two apps, can be built directly into their respective PNDs.

We already have users complaining about the Pandora being too complicated. Shared PNDs will cement the Pandora firmly into the 'only for hardcore hackers' style device.

 

[God Ginrai]

Things like timidity and KDE libs are going to be used by enough apps to warrent a place in the firmware.

Bull shit they are. If you think that KDE libs is going to be used often enough to be put in the firmware, then there is a lot of other shit we would be putting in there and we would run out of room. (I mean KDE libs themselves are, what, 80 MB?)

-God Ginrai

 

[Pleng]

Things like timidity and KDE libs are going to be used by enough apps to warrent a place in the firmware.

Bull shit they are. If you think that KDE libs is going to be used often enough to be put in the firmware, then there is a lot of other shit we would be putting in there and we would run out of room. (I mean KDE libs themselves are, what, 80 MB?)

-God Ginrai

So if they're not going to be used in more than 1 or 2 apps, leave them out and let devs include them with their PNDS...

 

[God Ginrai]

Things like timidity and KDE libs are going to be used by enough apps to warrent a place in the firmware.

Bull shit they are. If you think that KDE libs is going to be used often enough to be put in the firmware, then there is a lot of other shit we would be putting in there and we would run out of room. (I mean KDE libs themselves are, what, 80 MB?)

-God Ginrai

So if they're not going to be used in more than 1 or 2 apps, leave them out and let devs include them with their PNDS...

I am saying that there are plenty of things that would be used as much as KDE libs, and if you make the decision to include KDE libs, then you have to include those to, at which point you run out of room on the NAND.

-God Ginrai

 

[slaeshjag]

Why wouldn't the idea of keeping common libs in a directory in appdata work?

It would work. But it would hardly be intuitive for users. The idea of the PND system is that you shouldn't NEED to install something to make something else work.

Just put the larger commonly used libraries on the NAND, make it part of the firmware. No confusion there. Owners of portable devices are used to some apps needing the latest firmware to run. They are not used to 'please put these files in appdata before you use this app', or 'please make sure you have PND x on your SD card before you run this app'. Things like timidity and KDE libs are going to be used by enough apps to warrent a place in the firmware. More obscure large libraries, which are only going to be used by one or two apps, can be built directly into their respective PNDs.

We already have users complaining about the Pandora being too complicated. Shared PNDs will cement the Pandora firmly into the 'only for hardcore hackers' style device.

How about... A shared library directory, and a library repository? If all dependencies are specified in the PXML, it would be possible to use a library repository so that any required libraries can be automatically downloaded and put in a dedicated folder that is in the system library path (symlink from SD-card maybe?).

Just an idea.

 

[Pleng]

And what happens if the user moves the PND to another SD card? And removes the first SD card?

This is breaking the PND system. We may as well have gone the standard repository modified to install to SDs...

 

[slaeshjag]

Well, the problem that a lot of space will be wasted because there isn't enough space for all libs in the NAND could be sort of annoying, but I guess most users won't have a SD card dedicated for extending the NAND.

 

[God Ginrai]

And what happens if the user moves the PND to another SD card? And removes the first SD card?

This is breaking the PND system. We may as well have gone the standard repository modified to install to SDs...

It's not hard to keep applications that use the same library on the same SD card as the library. People do it all the time with ROMs.

-God Ginrai

 

[Tempel]

I've gotta support Pleng on this one. As I understood, PNDs were developed to act like cartridges or discs in video game consoles; you drop them in and they run, and everything needed to run it is either in the console by default, or in the game itself. Trying to handle dependencies, whether by user or automatically, begins to move away from the cartridge metaphor, getting dangerously close to package manager territory. All management of PNDs should be doable on any system (no special software required), with a minimum of user intervention. Hell, even just finding the right folders to put them in has been confusing for a number of people.

I feel that we should shove a few more common libs into the default firmware, then make developers include anything else they need within their PND. SD cards are cheap, I think we can afford a few duplicate libs within PNDs. Of course, deciding which libs should be in the firmware could be a challenge, so we might want to wait to see what libraries are popular.

Personally, though, I intend to put my root on SD and install everything I can through opkg. I'd really like to see a feed for games, though that would require more developer work to package them yet another way.

 

[God Ginrai]

I've gotta support Pleng on this one. As I understood, PNDs were developed to act like cartridges or discs in video game consoles; you drop them in and they run, and everything needed to run it is either in the console by default, or in the game itself. Trying to handle dependencies, whether by user or automatically, begins to move away from the cartridge metaphor, getting dangerously close to package manager territory. All management of PNDs should be doable on any system (no special software required), with a minimum of user intervention. Hell, even just finding the right folders to put them in has been confusing for a number of people.

I feel that we should shove a few more common libs into the default firmware, then make developers include anything else they need within their PND. SD cards are cheap, I think we can afford a few duplicate libs within PNDs. Of course, deciding which libs should be in the firmware could be a challenge, so we might want to wait to see what libraries are popular.

Personally, though, I intend to put my root on SD and install everything I can through opkg. I'd really like to see a feed for games, though that would require more developer work to package them yet another way.

A lot of people do not want to have a bunch of SD cards they have to keep switching in and out. (That's how you lose the damn things) And having duplicated data for simplicity's sake has its limits.

-God Ginrai