On 10/22/07, Steve Greenland <steveg at moregruel.net> wrote: > much faster. But I'm a little baffled -- it still shows (some) lib* > packages, which I would consider the first thing to filter out, since > they'll be installed by dependencies, and there is little reason (for a > non-developer, at least) to installa particular library. Speaking of libs, why is the "incompatible package" error still there? IMO the app manager should just allow the installation of any category, not just user/*. This is a problem because some applications don't use the repository method, and installing the dependencies from the maemo garage is a problem. Then, users are instructed to switch to red pill mode by the application developers, or sometimes the app developers just repackage the libraries in the category "user/libs" so that the packages can be installed from the garage. Both should not happen, and the way to prevent it is to allow any category (or maybe just "libs") to be installed manually from the app manager. Some of the developers won't use the repositories no matter what you do, and as far as I can tell/analyze, the reasons are: - It's hard (well, not well-documented) to get access to, and to set up keys etc. - Distributing files from garage downloads are much easier (and can track download counts) They don't care about the advantages (easy rolling of releases and auto-installation of dependencies) because there are ways to get around them. They can just open a thread in ITT and announce, and instruct people about the red pill mode if needed. And yeah, this bothers me. Red pill mode shouldn't be used by non-developers (or even non system developers) and there should be ways to install bare "libs". You could keep a track of manually-(user-)installed libs and show them in the package list, and still hide the other (system) library packages. Of course a better way could be not to hide any packages, but introduce better organization/categorization in the app manager so nobody has to use the "All" option (and move it to the bottom too) yet still nobody sees system packages in the list, without ticking a checkbox in preferences or without going into the system packages category. Cheers -- Kemal
