[haiku-development] Re: Haiku, Inc. in Contempt of Its Community

  • From: Augustin Cavalier <waddlesplash@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 16:34:47 -0500

On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 4:11 PM, Jessica Hamilton <
jessica.l.hamilton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Augustin, you miss the point here is that PM could have been less
> disruptive.
>

+1, but that ship has sailed. All we can do now is ensure A4->B1 upgrading
is smooth (and there are a lot of TODOs there...)


> And so far, there is only one 3rd-party package repository out there.
> Everything else, to date, has had to go through commits to the Haiku tree
> (which is again extremely sub-optimal).
>

+1 on both counts, again. We need a better system (I probably should learn
Ruby on Rails to help Alex out with his auto-package-builder system...).

However, just because there's only one 3rd-party package repo isn't our
fault (before PM, there really was just one website for software -
Haikuware.) Now, everyone and their dog is hosting HPKG files on their
site, and IMO that's a big improvement over "install me anywhere" zipfiles
or SoftwareValet .pkgs.


> Whilst packaging is pretty damn good (there are still cases where it falls
> over), it is going to take significant time for software to be migrated.
>

+1, although I think we got a good 75% of that migrated over between the
merge and today.


> By introducing new paths instead of leveraging the existing paths with a
> bit more thoughtful design could have saved a lot of hurt.
>

I disagree. Package management is supposed to be the default, not "we need
a package manager so let's add it as a half-afterthought". Changing the
directory structure of the system was a good thing, IMO. It's a lot simpler
now.


> When you're telling users to change things that they're downloading from
> some 3rd-party site, when the system is clearly 100% capable of
> accommodating it all, is usually a very good indication that we've made
> some poor design choices.
>

We are telling end-users to change things? Where? That is the last thing I
want to do. PM should make end-users lives *easier* by a lot, not harder.


> And if users are going to be making a jump from Alpha4 to Beta1, then we
> will definitely need to be prepared for a backlash from the community.
>

No, we should do what we can to make the process smoother (like I said
before -- automatic migration of common & ~/config to non-packaged folders,
etc.) before we release.

-Augustin

Other related posts:

  1. Home
  2. haiku-development
  3. Archive
  4. 02-2015