Download pnd, drop it here; thats it. No config hacking or anything, pretty darned easy, and reliable.
[/quote
Lies! You forgot:
1. "Insert SD card"
2. "mkdir /media/card1/pandora/games" (or whatever it is, sheesh..)
3. "Download PND manually using a browser/wget/curl/netcat/etc."
4. "Put PND in newly created directory"
Nice try!
You didn't respond to my later commentary -- how does your repo deal with SDs ejecting and
inserting all the time?
On SD-mount, scan for .desktop files, if found, add them to the menu. On SD-eject, update the menu to exclude whatever was on the ejected filepath. Simple!
You also ignored the fact that it _is_ a handheld, with limited RAM; integrating a lot of apps
into the fileysystem simplky _cannot happen_ sensibly.
Hogwash, its got more RAM than most of my Linux boxes have ever had, historically. Straw man!
Likewise, your pointtting to hotfix and codec pack is sillyness at its height; the hotfix pack is
a hotfix released say day as the device, by a couple of people making devices; you thinbk they
have time to set up all sorts of systems right now?
Nope, but you'd think in the two years of thinking about this, they'd have come up with something that *doesn't* represent the same technology as a Windows box from the 90's. 'Manually Download a "Hotfix" and apply it yourself to get your system working properly', shudder.. puke!
the hotfix was to repair a kernel issue, in the way simplest for the users. Eeryone knows
how to download a file and copy it to SD;
More lies! iPad-/iPhone-using Grandmas don't! Is this a handheld entertainment device or a hacker-masturbation tool?
you want them, day zero, with a screwy kernel, trying to set up wifi and sucking down a
fix from a repo? *hardly* and never really done anywhere
Wifi should work from the get-go, or else the Base OS isn't releasable, and if this didn't work from the beginning I wouldn't have, personally, released the OS .. so yes: I *do* want them setting up wifi and doing an upgrade through the repo manager. Much better than having to use another computer somewhere else to download a file manually, copy it over, etc. Didn't you see the threads where people were already having problems with having to do all this?
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And try to find the number of problems with people using pnds; oh wait.. none!
Out of the 30 or so active users who have their Pandoras already, I've counted 5 - on IRC and on these forums - who didn't apply the hotfix, didn't know there was a hotfix available, and had all sorts of problems with their systems as a result ..
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The only reports I've seen are: 1) a couple pepole who put them in / instead of /pandora
/random-directory; that is _on purpose_ -- and thanks for not asking why, and just assuming its
stupid ;)
Its 2010, for people to have to mkdir something to make something something work something .. give me a huge fat break, man. Head, Sand, OUT!
[/code]The reason I picked for that was.. the system is defaulting to dirwalking from the
searchpaths, so that people can organize in hierarchies if they want; so having it look at /
implies searching the whole SD, which could also be a 1TB USB disk.[/code]
You're only dirwalking because you have to - you don't have a proper package manager to sort it out for you, LOL!
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That'd be just plain slow to seek through. So we suggest people use a /pandora hierarchy,
much like many other devices do. But they're free to use / or anywhere else if they're experts and
do want to fiddle with the confs.
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So yes, we have a basic and very easy to follow rule :)
Please draw a picture for Grandma, who will have a Pandora and not know what the fuck you are talking about. OR .. is Grandma not in your 'target user group', elite-wise?
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As to the only other issue I've seen -- was a developer who had a broken pnd
ANOTHER THING A REPO+PACKAGE MANAGER WOULDN'T HAVE ALLOWED!~!
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So yes, theres been no real problems with pnd files.
So all of the above was just hallucination then, eh?
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Now instead, try to get the repo working when the user may not have wifi at all (and there
is no ethernet port), and try to get OS fixes how?
"Here Grandma, download this file to your SD card (getwifiworking.pkg) and then just double-click on it on your Pandora..."
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We don't have a NIH here syndrome;
You really, really do, or else you'd be using repo technology to solve all these problems already, LOL!
Code:
seriously, we're much prefer to not code anything we didn't have to. We're erring on the
side of user convenience. (And that said, maybe I'll all wrong; fine, could be. You can call me an
idiot if you like, I've been developing for a looong time, it won't hurt my feelings.) I might
also be influenced from developing for handhelds of every possible OS for 15 years :)
Well then, like you I've also been developing Unix-based software since 1983, and have been also developing for every possible handheld OS for the last 20 years (from Atari Portfolio through PalmOS through Symbian, through WinCE through iPhone through Angstrom) as well, and I think user-downloadable PND-files that must be user-maintained are Just Plain Stupid. Its not the 90's, although if it were, this would've been cool.
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But I think I'm onto something, and people are very enthusiastic about the pnd system.
Go ask Grandma. Until you've done that, I'm going to consider that you're being myopic because you're surrounded by sycophants and other Wise Elite Uber-hackers.
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You gather experience first.)
.. all the while ignoring the countless man-years of experience that repo technology provides to the scene, right, got it .. or haven't you ever maintained a repo, actually? Come to think of it, *have* you ever maintained a real repo and seen it work for tens of thousands of users? If not, this explains why you're inventing another one, slowly, and about 10 years behind everyone else ..
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So we might have missed the boat, but clearly we're doing something right -- almost every
user of pnds has had them work out of the box, as adveritised, with no weird device setup that
would fail if their wifi doesn't work, or if they yank out the SD and stick it in the other
slot.
Wifi working: from the factory, or else.
SD removal: not a problem that repo's/package managers haven't already solved, sorry! If you don't get it, I'd say its because you didn't look : you thought it better to just re-invent the wheel instead of doing some real experience-gathering study of the existing scene .. hmm ...
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BTW, I've been using BSD and Linux (and solaris, irix, etc) for a very long time, and I also
know how often people get bitten by repos when they don't want to be :)
I don't doubt your technical skills or your general competence. Its your arrogance and myopia I'm complaining about, but that could just be a result of my own 20 years experience with developing mass-market Unix-based devices and the NIH-syndrome-afflicted developers that the evolution of such systems attract ..
Now look, before you reply, I want you to know that I like you Jeff, I respect you and the *other* things you have done, development-wise, really I do, but I think you're being really pretty dumb here.
PND's belong in a repo, and a package manager belongs in the hands of the user. Its not 1994.
HOTFIX: DO NOT WANT! Single-button update-to-latest-proven-stable packages: WANT.
