ext Ed Bartosh wrote: >> The problem is that the repos are frustrating to access and use, so folks >> are throwing up their own instead. > This one I don't understand at all, sorry. What frustration are you > talking about? For those developers who has garage accounts it's just > matter of sending one e-mail asking for access to extras. What kind of > frustration do you see here? > >> It's an often discussed problem on >> the developers list, although I don't recall that any clear conclusion >> has been reached beyond "Nokia is working on making the repos better", >> or that any clear timeline has been laid out for improvements. > If it's about extras I think it's 100% community issue. Extras was given > to community long time ago, but people didn't manage to organize more or > less working practice to put their packages there. They prefer to have > their own repositories or just put packages everywhere for some unknown > reason. I think at least partially it's because there's no carrot being offered to the developers. If the Extras repository was included in the Application Manager by default, although disabled (as Multiverse is in Ubuntu, you can show a disclaimer when enabling it), people would be more likely to upload to it: - It creates awareness of the repository. Outside this mailing list few developers are likely to even know of the existence of this repository. If the repository is visible in the manager you can Google for instructions on how to get your own software there. - It gives the developer a wider audience to distribute to than just having his .install file on his project page. Plus it's just cool to be able to install your software "out of the box" in a few clicks. - Without some official blessing Extras is just-another-repo from developer perspective, with the added downside of not being fully under the developer's control. The process for delivering to the Extras repository could also be streamlined: - In my opinion there's a "don't call us, we'll call you" vibe in the instructions on Garage. - Integrate it with the garage project page! When creating a release and uploading files to the project, there should be a checkbox on the release page for automagically pushing the packages to the repository. If there's any additional hoops to jump through people just aren't going to bother. Witness how few people bother listing their software on downloads.maemo.org compared to the large number of new releases on Garage (which is another discussion, creating a new release on Garage should update the downloads catalog automatically). Regards, Tomas
