Package Management merge gets noticed!

If you haven't tried a recent nightly, then you don't know:

Will Haiku fall flat on its face ? http://fatelk.com/faceplant.htm

why is it read only?

previously, adding apps was a drag & drop operation -- why is package management now so complex when a script could easily place a file where it needs to be? what problem is addressed by the added complexity? i'm all for a browsable interface of available apps, but this is a bit much -- like, how am i to manually install apps from elsewhere if access is read only? i've yet to get this system online even once, so all i have are questions.

hearing reports of many apps having broken, and now work being undertaken to fix those apps and make them into packages, it's a bit weird -- that's a lot of effort that could've gone elsewhere had the package management simply interfaced with the existing filesystem with its existing permissions. instead, all things must be ported, so that native apps may run again. how does that make sense?

ah, cool. does a recompile of old apps work if i have the source, or will they need something more? still not feeling good about read-only stuff and felt the warning upon opening system files (with the option to open them read-only or read-write) was pretty cool and also kind.

Normally, it's still just a drag&drop (or, once repos are operational, all searching/downloading/installing/uninstalling is done from HaikuDepot). Please have a look at the article Installing apps in PM Haiku.
If apps rely on hardcoded paths they've been broken all along and only worked by accident. But even then, as PulkoMandy said, solutions are being found to accomodate most of those.

Regards,
Humdinger

Except, the real problem is that the "limited software available for it" is largely crappy ports, abandoned apps where the devs lost interest, and poorly written stuff by amateurs.

You can't make that problem disappear - and you can't thrive with such a situation either.

What we need is well built, well packaged software, with dedicated developers who will maintain it and repackage it properly.

I cannot believe people still believe the "unzip to /boot" is a packaging solution - it was more-or-less discouraged from day one as a temporary hack, and yet nobody seriously came up with anything better until 10 years later. And now 10 years later, we're dealing with 10 years of shitty software packaged with a hack, and people complaining. What did they think would happen? Why do you think Haiku hasn't become "beta" yet? Alpha software means it's not done, and stuff will still change - and when the final big piece is dropped into place, and stuff changed (as was promised it would), everyone decides the sky is falling, and they're too lazy or incompetent to improve any of the "broken" software.

I'm not going to comment specifically on whether ~/config should be editable or not - I think it's focusing on too specific an issue at this point, when I believe the real problem is that we have a trove of stale software that needs to be repackaged and/or fixed to meet future design goals of Haiku. What happens if we go down this path, and a year from now it turns out you were right and we change everything back? Software that is built to use a packaging solution we've defined, will continue to "just work", while any further hacked software that unzips to hardcoded paths will simply fail again. That is what has happened with /boot/common.

Sorry, this idea that the haiku devs are somehow "above" the commoners rubs me the wrong way.

Haiku is a volunteer-based project. The reality is, there is a small number of people who are 1) knowledgeable enough and 2) motivated to even be working on Haiku in the first place.

Maybe more of the "commoners" should rise up to participate and help out with the project.

There has been a very small number of people who have time to work on and finish areas of Haiku, and even fewer who have approached Haiku, Inc. to seek payment to do so. The latter seems to be a point of contention among certain community members, and creates undue animosity toward the developers and Haiku, Inc. decision makers.

I agree that the discussion should occur between those who develop, and those who use - but I think the discussions are happening in the wrong places at this point. The only real common ground is the mailing lists.

I see a lot of fringe "discussion" happening that is mostly being ignored because it's not the central communication channel. These forums for example, the IRC channel, Haikuware, etc. Furthermore, I see a lot of misinformation being disseminated in these fringe areas by people who neglected to properly understand what is going on and why something is 'broken'... and that chaps me.

At what point will these "commoners" respond back with the logical solution: A fork of Haiku that does things the way they believe is right? I'm not saying that's a healthy solution to this problem, but in the world of FOSS, it's the logical conclusion when there are multiple factions of people with extremely disparate views on how the software should work. Sometimes the new fork wins over a substantial amount of the user base, and many of the developers jump ship as well. Recent examples I've seen being X.Org, LibreOffice, Linux Mint, MariaDB, etc.

So far, I'm seeing far more complaining than attempts to resolve the problems at this point - which doesn't impress me all that much.

I too have ported a few things to Haiku over the years - I'm gonna eventually have to go back and verify that none of those are broken - I realize they'll need to be repackaged. Fortunately next to nobody uses the stuff I've ported, so I don't have people complaining to me that I need to fix it ;)

Personally, I both love and hate the package management system.

But it works, and for what it does it works well.

While no 4 star software I plan to rewrite all my programs to fit better with the present Haiku-OS and it's package management system.

Does anyone know how I remove my present software from BeBits and Haikuware? I don't want to just package the present code, all them need up-dating before I release new packaged versions.

@bbjimmy: maybe you didn't notice, but here you are the one being harsh and telling the devs are stupid. You decided that all the devs are running Linux,and this is not true. Haiku is my one and only operating system, I put a lot of work, currently full-time and paid, but in the past also a lot of week-ends and nights building up the software I wanted and needed to use to get work done. This includes things such as the IUP widget toolkit so I can write portable apps from Haiku and not force users to run it, the libusb port so I can do embedded device stuff, several ports of gcc (for AVR and for 6809), and some other tools like GrafX2, a pixelart editing program. I could have used these on Linux where they are available out of the box, but instead, I have chosen to spend years (yes, really) to port all these things to Haiku in a clean way, so I can get work done with my favorite OS. Before being a developer, I was a user, and I learnt C++ until I know enough of it to get commit access. And now that I am a developer, I'm still an user and I still have to get work done, so of course breaking the os for fun is not something I do, and when someone does, I don't hesitate to revert commits that prevent me to use the OS.

That being said, I don't have a single problem caused by the package manager. Yes, things have moved a bit and I had some trouble during my first steps. I noticed setgcc was now gone and I had to play with the PATH or CC/CXX environment variables to change the compiler; I saw that /boot/common and /boot/apps were gone; I saw that I couldn't keep the deskbar "applications" menu in a tracker window with big 48x48 icons as an easy way to launch apps. But I'm yet to find a single application that I can't get to run. I even packaged most of the stuff I use to make system upgrades simpler.

What you think is sounding harsh and telling users they are stupid is not arrogance. It's just that after spending years working this way to make the OS better, we very rarely hear people telling us "guys, what you do is very great". We do, however, get people telling us "what you did is completely stupid". I will accept being told I'm wrong, but you have to bring valid arguments and make some efforts to convince me: open bugreports about the apps that don't work anymore after the PM merge, show us how this is annoying to you and prevents you to get work done, and we'll work together to try setting up a solution. It's as simple as that. When we hear a complaint from an user saying "I think you should do this and that, because I think it's better than what you have", without any valid arguments to support the claim, we can only remember you that we do this on our free time (for the most part), and the fact that you are an user doesn't get you any veto right on how the system should work. Look at Microsoft or Apple: even if you pay for their OS, there are even fewer ways to have them hear your voice.

Now, there are some paid contracts running, powered by donations to Haiku, Inc. We can certainly understand that people who have donated money there may think it was misused. I think Haiku, Inc. also heard the complaints and they are not funding package management related contracts anymore. Read the start of the article that announced my contract: http://www.haiku-os.org/news/2013-08-29_haiku_needs_you. So, they are listening and trying to get things right. We're all still a bit unused to working this way, and I'm sure things will go smoother in the future.

As for the communication channel, the ML is more convenient for me. I can check my mailbox and easily see all the unread messages, reply if I want to, keep them for later, or mark them as read if I don't care. On a forum, I have to check each topic one after another, using a web interface which is considerably slower. It's harder to keep track of which part of the replies to a topic I've already read, and I often miss valuable input. I find this very sub-optimal, so I avoid the forums as much as I can. And I don't think I will react differently just because you sent your messages here or on the ML. I'll handle it the same way. Always remember that things can escalate pretty fast with such written communication mediums: you read a message, something upsets you, and you write a reply while being angry. Out of the guys that read it, at least one will feel offended and will write an harsh reply as well. You read it, feel they didn't take care to think through and read carefully, and things escalate pretty quickly. It's always better to not answer too fast to the messages, let things cool down a bit and write your reply with a peaceful mindset. But on an high-traffic mailing list there's always one or two guys not doing that... At some point it is better to ignore them.

Also, if you fear going against all the developers at once as a single user, no problem, contact one of the devs in private (all the mail addresses are public), group with some other users, and take time to set up your arguments and come with a solution. Good suggestions and constructive criticism will be taken into account.

Another question is....
can someone estimate when haiku will be able to update itself using packagemanager , and not needing to install a new nightly image?

again, thanks, everyone, for the work. there's a kind of intense devaluation of labor at play here and on the haikuware post and i'm sorry to have contributed to it in this thread. this isn't an official release, even the paid contracts aren't really great pay and most everyone's working for free, this operating system still does things that others are finally getting around to implementing (i.e. streaming video between apps) and i'm totally new to all of this, built from the labor of a handful of people over the course of a decade almost entirely from scratch. so much of it makes more sense than any other environment i've worked in, even if it is still rough around the edges, and package management of some sort is absolutely necessary, not just for making apps easier to find and install, but to facilitate a smooth update of the system over time. thanks, everyone, for what you're doing, and for also lending advice when i've needed help.

As for the ability to drag and drop software to install, that is how software is installed with package management. Through one means or another a HPKG file is transferred onto the computer and copied into one of several directories. Software installed. The real beauty is being able to drag and drop the HPKG *out* of the watched directories to do an un-install!

Maybe it should give the user a choice...

You should perhaps file an enhancement ticket on Trac.

The home folder is indeed still writable, and so is home/config/settings, and home/config/non-packaged. The latter has all the usual directories (bin, data, ...) and you can mess with it if you wish so.

I don't see how moving stuff to the non-packaged folder can be so much of a problem.

There is a blacklist file that allows excluding files from packages: https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/barrett/2013-12-15_how_permanently_blackli...

Ok, this is slightly more complicated than removing the file, but it also avoids unrecoverable modifications to the system.

Nice, didn't know. I don't mind having it complicated :)

I don't think that hasn't been tackled yet, but now that Oliver is back, I hope we'll see some development in that direction.
You could try mmu_man's myupdate.sh. not sure how well it works, however.

Regards,
Humdinger

And the new "tried and true" method was mentioned just a few comments up by Pulkomandy:

https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/barrett/2013-12-15_how_permanently_blackli...

If anything, the new method is cleaner, as you don't have to rename files, you just configure the driver to be "blacklisted" on your installation.

I didn't thought that this would be such a big change of the system. If I have been informed right. These Days all apps/packages are in "ziped" format in Haiku but are presened as if they are unpacked.

Now that system are readonly and you only have home to but your drivers etc that you perhaps don't want to chare or make a package of. We would probably need a common (you know the one we removed :)) when we go multi user.

I beleve that ease of having a common Place to put driver etc in that more than one user will use and you don't want to make a package it are a valid Point to have a common folder that are not readonly for atleast not sysadmin.

Any way I'm trying to get my develper machine back on track :) Have some bugs that bugs me ;)

It will ask you if you want to uninstall BurnItNow, Lava and Melt.

If you want to uninstall BurnItNow and don't have Lava and Melt installed, then it will ask you if you want to uninstall cdrtools as well.

"...the real problem is that the "limited software available for it" is largely crappy ports, abandoned apps where the devs lost interest, and poorly written stuff by amateurs."

"What we need is well built, well packaged software, with dedicated developers who will maintain it and repackage it properly."

This pretty much sums up the state of Haiku at the moment.
Some emphasis has to be given now to what applications are included/excluded from the next release. There are some well built applications that exist(even if they are 12 years old) that could be dusted off, polished up, re-packaged and included with the next release.
The average Joe six pack who tries out Haiku as an alternative to Windows, Mac, or Linux wants to try out applications. He wants his hardware to work out of the box. He isn't going to care that the latest release has a new set of development tools included. Certainly, these ARE very important - but not to the end user.
Otherwise, we risk having reviewers writing articles that conclude with statements such as this:

"You get a bunch of other programs, like BePDF and WonderBrush, so it does have semblance of a real, functional system. However, the developers will have to do some really hard work to decide whether they want their creation to remain a sweet hobby or anything worth considering for more than five minutes." Dedoimedo.com Haiku Alpha 4 - So what's next? September 25, 2013

I consider the above only sensible when talking about physical CDs, like the one available from Haiku Inc.. When it comes to downloadable images, however, I'd much rather have impressively small file sizes and post-install only the packages I care about. Why add 100MiB for Qt, SDL and Java if I don't need it? If I do find an app that depends on these packages, they'll be downloaded automatically as needed anyway.
I also don't appreciate having my Deskbar apps menu filled with programs I don't use.

Regards,
Humdinger

I very much doubt that reviewers order the Commemorative CD for testing. Much quicker to just download an image (and then run in a performance killing VM...).

HaikuDepot already works well enough to do that right now. Instead of putting those apps in the image, they can be just as easily put into the repository.

Regards,
Humdinger