[openbeos] Ideas for Software Valet style App
- From: Tom Young <ores@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2002 01:25:50 +1300
Hi
I'm not a Team Member yet, but I plan to be once I learn a bit more
about
coding. But I am very actively following the progress.
In the mean time I came up with this idea for a Software Valet style
package
manager. Hopefully this helps in some way
The software would consist of 4 parts
4 parts
part 1: an XML website (probably with a backend database with the xml
and a
HTML access to it (bebits or boostsignal?))
part 2: Actual program
part 3: A file type (still running through the idea on this one)
probably XML
with lots of attributes
part 4: OpenTracker modifications (possibly not needed)
Tasks of package manager:
Ways to get new software:
* Loading the program and searching using an internal interface to the
XML site
* Browsing the site
* Downloading a zip from somewhere
* Downloading a package from somewhere
Ways to upgrade software:
All software should have a package description file in it, where it
comes in
the form of a package or just a zip file. This file should have what
the
program is, what it does and the version etc either in the attributes
or in XML
or both. To Upgrade all the user would have to do is run the package
manager,
which would do a BFS query and find all package description files. It
could
then
query the XML site and look for upgrades.
Ways to remove software
* By just deleting the folder you delete the package description file
(Fixes
the main problem with the windows package management)
* OpenTracker could be modified to search for this file and ask if the
user
wishes to uninstall instead of delete
* Loading the package manager and telling it to remove it.
Other issues:
* There would need to be any easy way to make the package file so that
people
who make and release apps they spent 2mins porting would be encouraged
to make
a package file.
* Need some easy way to keep track of which files should be
uninstalled and
which shouldn't (E.G. Config files)
* I don't really know much about shared libs on BeOS but something may
need to
be done to take them into consideration.
* I've ignored any special things that commercial software might need
* Maybe all files should have an attr describing what package they are
from.
I think a good package Manager would really improve OpenBeOS usability
and
something really powerful could also attract extra attention as i
believe no
other OS really has this quite right yet
Tom Young
Other related posts:
- » [openbeos] Ideas for Software Valet style App
