"ext Gary" <gary at eyetraxx.net> writes: > Erik Hovland wrote: >> That is the cause. Flash the updated version of the OS and skype will >> install without issue. >> > > Since maemo is loosely based on Debian, what are the chances we'll ever > see an incremental upgrade path akin to an 'apt-get upgrade' instead of > being required to flash the device every time a minor release comes out? The chances are quite high. It's the obvious thing to do. I can't make any promises about just when it will happen, but if it doesn't happen this year, I would blame myself personally. > I can maybe understand going from 2007 to 2008 but a dot release > shouldn't have to be such a hassle to move to, should it? It is tedious > to have to reinstall all my other applications in the event that I might > want to install something like Skype that requires the latest libraries. > And if it's the new app's fault, why can't the libraries be upgraded > instead as with any other standard Linux distro? There are at least two points here, and maemo can improve with regard to both: - the libraries could be more relaxed (but still correct) in specifying what dependencies applications should use that link to them, - and we could make newer versions of libraries available to everyone so that applications can drag them in on demand. Newer versions of dpkg-shlibdeps will compute more relaxed shlibs dependencies so that a newer version of a library will only be required when the new features in it are actually used[1]. But even when packages use the most-relaxed-but-still-correct dependencies, we should have a better way to roll out API additions and let applications use them. Right now, when an application needs a newer system library than what you have on your device, you need to upgrade your whole operating system by re-flashing. What is going to happen next is that you still need to upgrade your whole operating system even if you only want a single newer library, but you can do it by installing a bunch of packages from a repository. It will very likely be so that you still need to initiate this upgrade explicitly, but the Application Manager will hopefully tell you very clearly that you need to do it in order to install the application that needs the newer library. The usual way is that apt-get would just upgrade the library along with the application, without making any big fuss about it. I (at least) am not very comfortable with this right now, since it would mean that you get operating system configurations on your device that Nokia has never tested. Yeah, I need to sit down and precisely specify the upgrade computation performed by the Application Manager. Right now, it's not nearly as smart as apt-get or aptitude, but I don't want to just use their algorithms either since they are prone to killing the system by accidentally removing important packages. (I don't really blame that on apt-get or aptitude, I'd say it's more a problem of maemo not telling apt what is important.) [1] http://wiki.debian.org/Projects/ImprovedDpkgShlibdeps
