PackMan in 5.24

I’ve downloaded and installed 5.24 onto my Pi 3 and I’m having an odd issue with PackMan.

The icon bar menu reports that it’s version 0.9.1 Beta, however the main PackMan window says that it’s 0.8.3 and that an upgrade to 0.9.1 is available. If I try to install it then I get a window telling me that there are file conflicts.

Is this happening to anyone else?

Edit: And a similar issue with PipeDream. The 5.24 image includes 4.55.04 but PackMan thinks that 4.52.5 is installed and offers to upgrade it. It also has upgrades to the already-installed versions of SharedUnixLibrary and StrongHelp. What’s going on here?

Yes, in 5.23 from last year.

I think it is because my PackMan is in $.Apps but for some reason it wants to install it someplace else like $.Apps.Utilities? I told it to go ahead and update (backing up the conflicts), then I went and found the new version and dropped it into $.Apps. Might have been able to do this directly from PackMan? It wasn’t obvious how so I just cheated. No doubt it’ll whinge about this the next time I run it. ;-)

It seems strange to me that:

• The Apps “device” is mostly built out of applications in $.Apps
• The Apps “device” doesn’t support directories
• It’s apparently now the done thing to organise apps in loads of tidy directories within $.Apps.

Uh…?

Mine’s still in $.Apps even after doing the update (with a backup of the conflicting files). I know what you mean about it creating new directories all over the place, but you can avoid that: When you choose to install an app, you get a window with the app’s icon. You can drag that icon into a Filer window, like you would in a Save As window.

I have a suspicion about what’s happened in my case: I think the 5.24 image is probably based on an older “RC” image, which originally had PackMan 0.8.3 installed. My guess is that someone at ROOL dropped PackMan 0.9.1 over the top of 0.8.3 using Filer, instead of letting PackMan update itself. PackMan’s database therefore thinks that 0.8.3 is still installed.

That’s just a guess, but it seems to correspond with what’s happening. Same with PipeDream, SUL and StrongHelp; I think they were previously installed via PackMan and subsequently updated via Filer without “telling” PackMan that they’ve changed.

Does this sound like a plausible theory?

I’ve tested this again on my other machine (with a fresh SD card image) and I’m getting the same behaviour. I’m pretty sure that my theory is correct – no ego here :) – so I’ve filed it as a proper bug.