[haiku] Re: New "BeOSCompatibility" package for Haiku
- From: Adrien Destugues <pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 08:17:35 +0100
On 2013-11-05 at 23:58:06 [+0100], fano il primo <fanoilprimo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The 90% was not a statistic value but an impression reading this article of
> Haikuware:
> http://www.haikuware.com/20131018619/package-management-breaks-3000-apps-on-haikuware
>
> Karl was, obviously, angry and maybe it is a little exaggeration but how
> much are the apps of Haiku? More than 3000? For real?
3000 is the total number of apps available on Haikuware. Most of these were
re-uploaded from BeBits and were designed to run on BeOS.
> It is possible to, in some, way automatize the packaging of a "bad
> software"?
You don't need to package it. It was clear from the very start that some users
didn't
want to hear about package management, and we have support for that. There are
the
non-packaged directories, or you can just put your apps anywhere you want on
your
/boot disk or elsewhere (most of my software is installed in /Data/Software, on
a
different partition). You say the FS is read-only, but this is not true, there
are
only two read-only directories: /system and /home/config, with some
sub-directories
being writable.
I never, ever installed anything in /system or /home/config, these would be
very silly
places for installing applications. /system is the system, and you don't want
to mess
with that. /home/config has some useful folders, like a bin/ that's in the path
(but
there is a non-packaged equivalent) and settings/, which is still writable.
There is no need for going crazy on repackaging everything. Once we sort out
the
problems with SoftwareValet pkg files and our PackageInstaller, we will get
most of
the BeOS apps running again. There will still be problems with the one using a
custom
install system that tries to write to /system or /boot/home/config, and the
ones that
use "drop here" symlinks. These can be fixed by either packaging them, or
reworking
the install scripts. Both solutions are not as much work as supporting this in
Haiku
would be.
Then, there are the "unzip to /boot" style packages. These popped up on Haiku
(never
saw them on BeOS) to work around the lack of a package manager, for
quickly-ported
apps that hardcode their install location. These are quickly-ported (else the
author
would have spent the time making the path configurable), so, they are just a
recompile
away. We're still working on getting our SDL packages ready, then we can start
porting
them the right way, using haikuporter recipes.
We will not do a public release before we get these issues sorted out. This is
still a
work in progress and we will make sure the transition from BeOS R5 (the last
stable
release) to Haiku R1 goes smoothly. To keep a clean system, we can't support
whatever
happened in our nightlies or even alphas, and we are allowed to change our mind
between alpha/beta releases. This is why we take so much time to do a final
release:
doing so enforces us into supporting it on the long term, and we want to make
sure we
get it right before doing so.
--
Adrien.
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