"ext Dmitry S. Makovey" <dimon@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> Ryan Abel wrote:
>> To anybody reading using Red Pill mode, please don't. If you aren't
>> absolutely positive of what it's going to do, then you're just going
>> to get yourself in trouble. You don't need it and you don't want it,
>> so don't use it.
>
> Not trying to spin any flamewars or try to be obnoxious here, however I
> just have to ask this: "why the need for 2 modes in first place?".
The Application manager does not by default expose the full package
management to the user. Mainly, packages are separated into two
classes: visible packages and invisible packages, and the AM only shows
the visible packages. The idea is that we should allow developers to
use whatever package arrangement is best, but still isolate the user
from the resulting complexity.
We are doing that with the OS updates for example: you see one package,
and the dependencies of that package cause all kind of magic to happen
behind the scenes. Applications that have their own frameworks or
run-times that are maybe shared with other applications can do the same.
For example, python doesn't need to appear in the Application manager at
all, only the applications that use it.
However, the full package management system is still there under the
hood, and it is easy allow people to see it, if they so choose.
That was the original red-pill mode: it would just change the upper
layers of the Application manager UI so that the invisible packages are
no longer filtered out. You got to see how reality really was, not a
machine generated illusion.
Gradually, red-pill mode acquired more features. I generally made it so
that whenever I put a feature into the Application manager that should
make things simpler for normal people but had the potential for
preventing hackers from doing what they need, I added a red-pill mode
setting for switching that feature off.
For example, the Application manager now tries to be clever about where
to download packages to. It will use one of your memory cards without
asking or telling. But, we weren't totally confident that this wont
cause problems on its own: the filesystem on the card might be corrupted
in a way that the AM does not detect and downloads would fail over and
over again, etc. So, there is a red-pill setting that allows you to
force the AM to always download to the root filesystem.
More details about the red-pill settings can be found here:
http://hildon-app-mgr.garage.maemo.org/redpill-stable.html
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