dflemstr
It's a ball.
Hello everyone,
I once again thought about the software management on the Pandora, and have some basic questions (NOT about the PND system, please refrain from talking about it!).
All of these questions are related to various problems that I've seen in other open source projects, and I therefore want to (kind of) warn the Pandora devs so that they don't repeat the same problems, by asking these questions.
So, here we go:
I guess that's it for now. I'll edit this post if I come up with something more.
I once again thought about the software management on the Pandora, and have some basic questions (NOT about the PND system, please refrain from talking about it!).
All of these questions are related to various problems that I've seen in other open source projects, and I therefore want to (kind of) warn the Pandora devs so that they don't repeat the same problems, by asking these questions.
So, here we go:
- How will core updates happen? A new downloadable image every so often that needs to be flashed (by a PC etc), or just through normal IPKG updates?
- The modifications that have been done to Ångström by the Pandora team (menu selector, kernel, drivers etc), are they contained in packages, so that they can be uninstalled/reinstalled/upgraded easily, or are they just dumped in the default image outside of the packaging system?
- Is there a package that tells us which "version" of the OS a Pandora is running? On Fedora for example, there's a "fedora-release" package that depends on everything in the basic Fedora distribution, and that package contains a file ("/etc/blabla") that in turn contains basic version information for the system. Is there something like that on the Pandora, so that I can type "ipkg install pandora-release" and get all of the "official" Pandora packages easily, and so that I can open a file "/etc/pandora-version" and get some basic information about which version of the Pandora OS the device has?
- Is there any file in the "factory default" Pandora image that isn't a "member" of a package? Could someone make sure that all files are managed by packages, before the Pandora launches, so as to avoid problems? What I mean is that there shouldn't be some random "/etc/rc.d/menuselector" file that was just put there by the authors; that file needs to be a member of a "pandora-menuselector-service" package (or similarily-named) so as to make it upgradeable and integrity checkable.
- Will we have access to the full Ångström repository on the Pandora and will it be enabled by default?
- Will there be an IPKG community repository for us who want to deploy stuff via IPKG (because the PND format is limiting)? How will such a repository be administered?
- What about Debian ARM packages? Will there be a tool to install them, or something that converts DPKG-managed packages to IPKG-managed packages?
I guess that's it for now. I'll edit this post if I come up with something more.