Ok I Tried The Whole Separate Appdata Dir Thing

[rick0815]

Perhaps we can extend Thunar so that one can right-click on a PND and get a "show application data folder" menu entry. Stuff like that.

That sounds like a not to complicate to create and easy to use solution to me, from a users point of view.

 

[cosam]

I'm actually talking about end users. People who doesn't have a clue about xml files, etc. For them it is hard, and not the way they feel they should have to configure things.

Why would end users need to have anything at all to do with PXML?

 

[Caine]

Oh come on guys, it's not that hard.

Almost every linux application stores its configuration files into hidden directories in the users home directory.
This is inadvisable for the Pandora since the home directory resides on the NAND (which is a bad idea by itself, imo).

The PND system essentially moves the home directory to the appdata directory on the same SD card as where the PND is stored.
That's it. This is the linux way, and there are many reasons to do it like this.

PND system is great (at least in concept, don't have my Pandora yet).

 

[Loon]

Hey guys sounds like we need an agreed standard for where to store the appdata.

 

[ste_167]

Perhaps we can extend Thunar so that one can right-click on a PND and get a "show application data folder" menu entry. Stuff like that.

That sounds like a not to complicate to create and easy to use solution to me, from a users point of view.

Maybe also a Show Documentation option.

 

[urjaman]

Please, not ZIP (I think its worse than ISO, which is bad but acceptable with RockRidge)

Disadvantages of ZIP:
- 4 GB limit on size of files
- no unix stuff like:
- symbolic links
- device nodes
- file permissions

Squashfs (for proper compression) or the current ISO with RR would be OK.

 

[cosam]

Hey guys sounds like we need an agreed standard for where to store the appdata.

There is one: pandora/appdata/<application-id>

A standard for application IDs may be quite useful though...

 

[juniorm33]

I'm actually talking about end users. People who doesn't have a clue about xml files, etc. For them it is hard, and not the way they feel they should have to configure things.

Why would end users need to have anything at all to do with PXML?

Because the end user is able to override/configure some settings, how this is done I do not know though.

 

[skeezix]

Mentioned a few times before -- there was a bug in minimenu, causing it to create extra empty directories; the minipatch I posted a week back fixed it, and now the hotfix#2 does it officially (hf#2 being in beta now, shoudl be officially released soon. See it in pother forum if you want the beta.)

So right now, appdata woudl be full of extra empty directories -- feel free to remove those, and use minipatch or hotfix #2.

(ie: an app must publish a unique-id, and may publish an appdata directory name to use (which is relatively new feature in the pnd system.) minimenu had a bug, where it was making both directories over time, instead of just using the app data directory name. The rule is .. it shoudl use the preferred appdata directory name, but if not present, it shoudl use unique-id as a directory name.. it was doing both.)

Anyway, so yeah, since you skipped the minipatch, you probably have twice as many directories as you need in there, which makes it ugly :/

jeff

 

[Trip]

Oh come on guys, it's not that hard.

Almost every linux application stores its configuration files into hidden directories in the users home directory.
This is inadvisable for the Pandora since the home directory resides on the NAND (which is a bad idea by itself, imo).

The PND system essentially moves the home directory to the appdata directory on the same SD card as where the PND is stored.
That's it. This is the linux way, and there are many reasons to do it like this.

PND system is great (at least in concept, don't have my Pandora yet).

Like he said

It looks like most of the people complaining about PND's, seem to be the ones that haven't used Linux that much. It's a good system and it will work very well if developers take two minutes out to correctly create the PND. Plus, (as has already been said on this thread) it will be a lot less confusing when there's only one version of each program instead of several developer versions.

Personally I think it should be given a chance to work before people start screaming for a linch mob.

p.s I thought it was also possible to just run programs as you could on the GP2X anyway, unzip and play?

 

[skeezix]

We could make an option so the appdata dir for an app is in the same place as the app.

The reason thids was not done was -- if a user sticks the app into /pandora/desktop, and then moves it to /pandora/menu, he has to mvoe the appdata dir too. You also run into the confusion of .. "wheres mny appdata?" - it moving around wherever the app has to be.

Theres really a couple ways to do it -- the way we do it now (well defined single location), doing it with the app, or some others; we figured at first, it is best to pick a well defined simple method and see how it goes.

To change the appdata dir location, is a change to pnd_run.sh and thats it -- no extra work, just one place, in a text sh-script, in I think one line; so not hard ot alter and experiment, if folks wouidl like to see how it pans out.

jeff

 

[Jumpman]

Well, I'm new to this whole PND issue. Never really used em before.

My first day with my Pandora, I was like WTF! It took me half a day to figure out what was going on, and how it appeared to function. Now, I seem to be doing just fine, not the choice I would have gone with, as I have not been able to download direct to my device due to the wifi/usb bug(i can, it's just a pain), so I don't know how much better this system would be from that standpoint.

Picodrive functions just like it did for me on my gp2x and wiz, nice frontend, play a game exit out at the touch of a button. No problems really. It's to early for me personally to say one way or another if it's good or bad.

Chris

 

[Dunny]

Would there be any utils (forgive my lack of searching on this matter) which would allow me to say, download the PND on my Windows/Linux machine, extract the files... and then put them where I damn well please on the Pandora's SD card?

D.

 

[Trip]

I like j6cubic's idea personally. Extend the PND system, so that right clicking the PND from within your file manager offers you some basic options..

1) Edit the programs main config file
2) Open the programs home page
3) Open web site address for the source code.
4) Profit??

 

[cosam]

Would there be any utils (forgive my lack of searching on this matter) which would allow me to say, download the PND on my Windows/Linux machine, extract the files... and then put them where I damn well please on the Pandora's SD card?

Yes, they're called "mount" and "cp" ;-) This is what I meant by a PND installer. It's like three lines of shell scripting (more if you want a fancy point-n-grunt walkthrough).

 

[Pleng]

It would have probably required a little more work, but I don't see why the 'appdata' couldn't have been included inside the PND as a separate area which would be protected from overwrites from updates.

Here's how it could work. The PND is represented in the OS as a directory. When you enter the directory, there is an icon for the application and a directory called 'data'. Clicking on the icon runs the application and clicking on the 'data' icon would allow you to access the 'protected from updates' section of the file.

 

[cosam]

I like j6cubic's idea personally. Extend the PND system, so that right clicking the PND from within your file manager offers you some basic options..

1) Edit the programs main config file
2) Open the programs home page
3) Open web site address for the source code.
4) Profit??

5) Move to menu/desktop/both
6) Unpack to SD

 

[Aninhumer]

My suggestion, in the distant past when I argued for the zip system, was that it would make a folder with the same name as the zip (in the same dir as the zip too) so it was easily identified and deleted.

I feel there is a benefit to obfuscating the appdata folder from the user.
If it's hard to access, it forces the developer to consider how they can let the user do things without going into that directory.
For example, configuration can be done with menus, instead of requiring editing a file, and necessary data files or roms can be located anywhere the user wants, and located with a launch script, instead of having to be placed in exactly the right place.

As I said before, I'm a filesystem clean freak, but I really don't begrudge having to occasionally delete an appdata directory, it's not hard.
I'd much rather other users had a seamless experience.

EDIT:

I like j6cubic's idea personally. Extend the PND system, so that right clicking the PND from within your file manager offers you some basic options..

If you're really that bothered, it would be simple enough to make XFCE custom actions for "Open data directory" and "Delete local files".

I said it first.

 

[skeezix]

Pleng.. the goal was single file; if its a unpacked directory full of stuff, its a different game entirely, but we wanted .. you download a file, it shows up in the menus etc, and just runs. Piece of cake. Having peopel download a zip, have to unzip it, and run some installer to get menu items set up, and some special files for minimenu to crawl through to find the app to show .. its getting ugly.

Early on, a pnd could be unpacked and work in-place; I don't know if it works right now, as wasn't on my test list for the last few months.. but in theory, a pnd file that is unpacked (get the goods out of the iso) should more or less still just work (same appdata rules, etc.)

jeff

Me or someone can hack out a new pnd_run.sh which moves the appdata dir if folks want to try it out. *shrug*

 

[Dunny]

Would there be any utils (forgive my lack of searching on this matter) which would allow me to say, download the PND on my Windows/Linux machine, extract the files... and then put them where I damn well please on the Pandora's SD card?

Yes, they're called "mount" and "cp" ;-) This is what I meant by a PND installer. It's like three lines of shell scripting (more if you want a fancy point-n-grunt walkthrough).

Lol, that's a nice reply

I'm gonna keep my opinions to myself until I get a pandora! When I bought it, I was pretty much hoping for a menu system the way that the GP2X did things, and it seems that more and more people are going to have to use xfce - I'm hoping that all of this PND stuff can be done without any desktop linux having to be invoked.

D.