Official Release - CMOS

That’s always a good way to get users on board: call them “dumb”.

But when behaviour is as ridiculous as that described, what other description would fit?

Refusing to use the packager and downloading the files manually, that would be fine (which is no different to downloading any other zip file).

Refusing to download new versions because they are in zip files designed for the packager is dumb.

Refusing to download new versions because they are in zip files designed for the packager is dumb.

… but if the user won’t install and use the package manager how do they download the files?

But when behaviour is as ridiculous as that described, what other description would fit?
Refusing to use the packager and downloading the files manually, that would be fine (which is no different to downloading any other zip file).

And how are end-users supposed to know that they can do this? IIRC the outcome of the thread that I’m thinking of was that most objectors did start to do so, but only because they were pointed in that direction by people (myself included) familiar with the system.

As I’ve already said: this is as much about PR as it is about the technical niceties of your pet solution. Package management might reduce your support overhead, but if it does so by driving users away from taking on updates then that probably isn’t the exact victory that you wanted.

… but if the user won’t install and use the package manager how do they download the files?

By clicking on the link in a web browser and downloading it like you normally do.

By clicking on the link in a web browser and downloading it like you normally do.

And how do they find the link to click on?

We’re drifting a little from my original point however: that those suggesting (on this and another thread) that !Store shouldn’t exist or should only contain commercial stuff are missing the point spectacularly. !Store appears to be a response to a massive and ongoing PR failure by RiscPkg and/or PackMan. Instead of just attacking developers for using it, you should be understanding and addressing users’ concerns (valid or otherwise in your opinion) with PackMan and thereby getting the uptake so high that there’s no point developers using anything else to distribute their software.

Or, in simple terms: go for the positive approach (improve PackMan and shout about that) instead of the negative one (slag off !Store and those who have put software into it).

Perhaps there’s some software that allows them to download and install it and notify them of updates automatically. That could be useful.

This line’s been in the riscos.info wiki for ages:

RiscPkg’s package format contains all files in the package in a ZIP file, so that RiscPkg is not needed to install applications that have been packaged by it. However, they still must be installed by RiscPkg (which isn’t the most user friendly of applications as of this writing) to be handled by the package management system, and the packaging isn’t the most friendly for a user that doesn’t have RiscPkg.

Edit: Anyway, a RISC OS developer could notify of new updates on their webpage, with a link, while also using RiscPkg. More work, but…

Good grief, Steve, where do I start with all the FUD in your posts? ;)

That’s always a good way to get users on board: call them “dumb”.

It sounds an awful lot like you’re attributing that ‘dumb’ comment to ROOL or someone associated with ROOL. Please re-read the post (and who posted it).

Complaining that someone else has tried to fix a long-standing problem perceived by many users because you haven’t told anyone that you’ve finally done something about it yourself seems a bit like sour grapes.

Hang on, are you saying someone (i.e. me) is “complaining” here? I welcome !Store. I also welcome !PackMan. I don’t particularly like the potential for confusion brought about by having the same software in both. Please re-read my posts on this subject.

Are you also implying ROOL have “finally done something”?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but ROOL did not make any changes to PackMan or the underlying RiscPkg; not a single line of code was harmed by us. These changes were made by the RiscPkg and PackMan maintainers with some very kind help from Theo. I’m not denying the whole RISC OS on Raspberry Pi has been a big motivating factor for them smoothing off some of the previous rough edges. Please let that set the record straight in this respect.

In the end, the PR (to both users and developers) matters just as much as the technical and ideological niceness of the solution

Have you any idea just how much effort has gone into getting this far? And that this is still technically a beta release? I’ve tried to make it clear (even in the welcome HTML pages) that packaging on RISC OS is very new and still under development. We’re not where we need to be just yet, but we’re not going to get there by implementing a competing alternative, non-package-managed solution.

Once again, !Store is great and has it’s place as a route to getting hold of commercial software for RISC OS. Maybe one day it, too, will supply stuff as packages which will integrate behind the scenes with PackMan? I think !Store is such a good idea (and indeed so important) that if RComp hadn’t done it, we would have (I was thinking about doing this at the beginning of the year).

And how do they find the link to click on?

It’s on the bleedin’ web page for the application – the same as any other download link and it’s discovered by non-PackMan using users in the exact same way as anything else: Google et al. It’s just a zip file. With the application inside. And a few other bits.

At least come up with some good arguments…

The simple fact is there are only so many hours in the day, and only so many developers. We’ve been working flat out to get the core RPi distribution to the state it’s in. Everything else has fallen by the wayside, simply because we had to get the distro out the door. So yes, we could have done a hundred things better (including publicity, documentation, etc etc). But making a Pi distro that actually worked was first priority.

Bear in mind that PackMan in the distro is, first and foremost, about distributing upgrades to the core RISC OS system: a new ROM is coming out shortly, and we don’t want to have to teach new users how to poke about in !Boot (which no doubt some proportion of them will get wrong, and then cause them either to give up and slag off RISC OS, or cause a support burden). The second priority after getting the distro out the door was to ensure that things we overlooked or didn’t have time to fix could be fixed post-release (as the new ROM will shortly be). !Store is a useful contribution to the package too, so it’s not as if they’re in conflict.

The software packages that came ‘for free’ as a result of already existing are merely a bonus. That’s why there’s not yet any means to add new software to the system and it’s barely documented… I’m sure people prefer to use the RPi distro now rather than hold it up for 6 months while all this stuff is sorted.

I know it’s unhelpful to say ‘the source is here’ but, realistically, we’re only going to be able to maintain this momentum if we get more developers onboard. So if you want something changed, the only way to guarantee it to happen is to do it yourself, because there may not be anyone else with the time to do it. And if you don’t know C/C++/Perl/version control/Linux/whatever (as various people have said to me recently), don’t be afraid – give it a try, and ask for help when you get stuck. The worst you can say is that you tried.

It sounds an awful lot like you’re attributing that ‘dumb’ comment to ROOL or someone associated with ROOL. Please re-read the post (and who posted it).

Definitely nothing to do with ROOL.

Another way to describe the stated behaviour is “Cutting of your nose to spite your face”.

However I struggle to find a suitable milder alternative description for someone unwilling to open a subfolder in an archive.

And how do they find the link to click on?

All the sites I’ve seen that use a packaging system, provide the link exactly as they would for a non packaged app.

The only difference is the app is in an obviously named subfolder.

(If the authors of the app were to withold this link from the site, then that would change my opinion a bit.)

And any flaws in the riscpkg system are caused by it being too simple as yet, not any fundamental flaws. (Much the same as RISC OS itself in that way.)

Peace, peace.

Lets start at the basics:
Packman works, but could do with a bit of work when people have time.
!Store is designed to do a similar thing but had the primary use of commercial software in mind.
Pop in a help item that says “for all your paid for software downloads” and take out the free stuff seems to be the general concensus and I would go with that.

PR – well we can start with people, like me, reading through the available content and seeing what is out of date. There’s plenty needs updating and probably rewriting in non-techie language.

Have I said anything anyone disagrees with? Mail me, steven dot pampling at btinternet dot com

Have I said anything anyone disagrees with?

No, I think you just reported upon opinions held by third parties, that I disagree with.

I think the problem with RiscPkg is that people looked at it as the finished product. However all it really was was a sound foundation for a distribution system, and a simple initial client.

Possibly one of the reasons I was happy with the initial client was that the way it chose to store the apps was exactly how I already was doing it.

It does now seem to me that packman should offer three choices when it fetches a package.

1. Install it in the default location and offer a stub.
2. Let the user choose where to install it
or 3 (which would be new) display to contents of the package for the user to deal with manually.

I said:

Have I said anything anyone disagrees with?

and got the reply:

No, I think you just reported upon opinions held by third parties, that I disagree with.

I’m smiling…

!Store is designed to do a similar thing but had the primary use of commercial software in mind.
Pop in a help item that says “for all your paid for software downloads” and take out the free stuff seems to be the general concensus and I would go with that.

I think having some free stuff in there is not a bad thing. Thinking of the new user it provides a place where selected free software is presented, as well as free demo versions of commercial stuff. It would be better if there was a filter that said ‘runs on Pi, runs on BBXM, runs on Iyonix, runs on Pandaboard XM, runs on Risc PC, runs on RISC OS 2’ so that only those software items relevant to your machine are presented.

I’ve had an R-Pi for a few months now, but it wasn’t until today that I finally wrote the SD card image and plugged it in. I’m totally blown away by the quality of the production. Steve, Theo, Ben, Jeffrey, Chris, and everyone else who’s been so busily involved, hats off!

The reason I finally chose today to plug it in was that I just had to find out what !Store was all about because of this thread. Mainly because no one has mentioned if !Store handles keeping software up to date in the way that !PackMan does. Having run it, I must say it also seems very nicely produced. A superficial glance over the !Help file hasn’t answered the question though. It seems to me like it probably doesn’t handle updates. In which case, there’s another reason why the two systems are very different. Also, I don’t think !Store manages dependencies at all, either, does it?

I was very against RISC OS package management at first, but that was largely due to my own ignorance of the issues involved. That !PackMan now allows you to put things where you want them is a major step in the right direction, and I’m very pleased to see it. As Steve (Fryatt) says, this was one of the main reasons people were against it. When that news filters down, perhaps more people will embrace it. I also think it’s a great move to have software already under package management on the distro. This means people don’t have to set !PackMan up for themselves and can just enjoy the benefits of being able to click “Update all”!

However I think it is a valid concern that if there is overlap between the two in terms of what they deliver, people may be confused. Then again, maybe that’s an overly hand-holding attitude, and people will be reassured by the diversity. The idea of a “one-stop shop for all your software needs” is a bit Apple. Perhaps we should embrace the diversity we have? (Unusually!)

Now, I’m going to go reset my R-Pi again (I’ve lost count how many times I’ve done this already), just to witness the blindingly fast (and pretty) boot again!

(If the authors of the app were to withold this link from the site, then that would change my opinion a bit.)

If Steve Fryatt and I are thinking of the same Usenet thread, that was exactly what happened. As a non-RiscPkg user myself, but as someone who happens to know a lot about the internal workings of the system (thanks to some work I did for ROOL, ironically), I was able to extract the correct link from the enormous well-hidden online index file, but it’s not reasonable to expect users to know or be able to do that.

It’s on the bleedin’ web page for the application – the same as any other download link and it’s discovered by non-PackMan using users in the exact same way as anything else: Google et al. It’s just a zip file. With the application inside. And a few other bits.

At least come up with some good arguments…

See above.

Also, it never occurred to me when reading the posts you’re responding to that anyone was attributing the remarks made to either ROOL or you personally, and I have no doubt that that was never the intention. I hope that, when RC6 has been pushed out of the door (via PackMan, I presume), you’ll treat yourself to a holiday, because it seems from the distinctly frazzled nature of all your recent posts that you really need it.

It seems to me like it probably doesn’t handle updates.

Not automatically but if you see that the version number has gone up and download the newer version it reminds you you have already downloaded this software and asks whether you want to overwrite the old archive it put in !Store.Downloads with the new one.

However you need to bear in mind that it was only initiated as a project in July 2012. It does have the capability to self-update itself as new versions are developed.

However, !PackMan supports adding multiple repositories, so it’s not the same problem as the “one gatekeeper” of Apple’s store.

Am I the only one who reads it as iStore? Ugh! Brainwashed.

withold this link

If Steve Fryatt and I are thinking of the same Usenet thread, that was exactly what happened.

This would imply that I wrongly attributed the dumbness.

(But it would also imply they were unable to, rather than refused to.)

That is even worse. There are valid reasons for not wanting to use riscpkg, but the design of the system makes it very simple to not use it, providing no-one does something like this.

The obvious one is not having networking on the RISC OS machine, not unheard of, IRUG has no network available for example.

Well, that was certainly timely. I was beginning to forget why package managers are a monstrosity which cause far more problems than they fix on all platforms, not just RISC OS.

Say no to middlemen!

Package management isn’t a bad thing.

And, any good package management system (and some mediocre ones) allows you to add repositories – and RiscPkg/PackMan does. Don’t like that your distro’s repos have old packages? Add the developer’s repo, then things stay fully up to date.

The reason I finally chose today to plug it in was that I just had to find out what !Store was all about because of this thread. Mainly because no one has mentioned if !Store handles keeping software up to date in the way that !PackMan does. Having run it, I must say it also seems very nicely produced. A superficial glance over the !Help file hasn’t answered the question though. It seems to me like it probably doesn’t handle updates. In which case, there’s another reason why the two systems are very different. Also, I don’t think !Store manages dependencies at all, either, does it?

No to both counts, as far as I can tell (although I got the feeling it hadn’t been ruled out for an upgrade in the future once things were working).

Seeing as Steve R is clearly struggling (or choosing to pick a fight for some reason), let’s get a few things straight. I’m in favour of package management on RISC OS, and have been supportive of RiscPkg and PackMan for years (as my public witterings on the subject have, I hope, shown over the past eight years). I don’t package my own software yet because, bluntly, the take-up amongst the wider userbase seems so low that the time seemed better spent elsewhere. I have been re-evaluating that recently, however; the use of PackMan on the Pi might just have been my motivation to finally sort it out.

My complaint here has purely been about comments like these from the BerryBoot thread (I commented over there, but also picked up on Theo’s comment here as it seemed relevant):

(Why are there two separate programs? I can understand why there might be a need for two methods of supply, but couldn’t there be one program that did both?)

I’ve explained why it’s sadly desirable to produce a system that’s Not RiscPkg Or PackMan, in order to produce some clear differentiation in the eyes of cynical users. It’s unfortunate, but the other alternative is to promote PackMan with some seriously good PR. And as that wouldn’t have handled the commercial angle, I’d guess that R-Comp went for the home-grown solution.

Note that I’m not R-Comp, and can’t speak for them. However, I do know what kind of response I get from “ordinary users” when talking about package management; I’m therefore not surprised at the route taken.

(The real WTF, though, is why there’s overlap between the two. NetSurf for instance. And why the Pi image doesn’t use the NetSurf package in !PackMan, to keep things updated.)

So software developers aren’t allowed to use both? As I’ll be in the same boat if/when I get around to sorting packages out for my stuff, I’m curious to know why it’s a WTF. Surely software is released so that people can use it? Making it available to the widest possible audience seems sensible, especially when we know that there are a not-insignificant number of users for whom the package management concept is tainted on RISC OS.

Personally, and this is my personal opinion rather than that of ROOL, I don’t think !Store should have any free software in it and !PackMan should be the repository for free stuff. That way, there’s no overlap and no confusion. Having stuff in both is a recipe for problems down the line.

And ditto. If the systems are easy enough to release through, I don’t see why it isn’t possible to support both and give users the choice of which one they use. I don’t see !Store being used for frequent, “development” builds; the RiscPkg system could be easily used for both if package building was streamlined enough.

In the end, we presumably want people to be using RISC OS. That means meeting them on their terms and giving them what they want. If that means “distribution via ‘not-PackMan’” then so be it. Developers who go down the route of offering multiple distribution methods shouldn’t be criticised: if one turns out to be demonstrably better than the rest, then it will win out in the long term anyway.

And yes, I’m well aware that none of these views are those of ROOL (in response to Steve R’s question above); that’s how a public forum works. I’m frankly baffled as to why Steve should imply that I thought otherwise.

Don’t like that your distro’s repos have old packages? Add the developer’s repo, then things stay fully up to date.

The developer’s what?

Download for Linux and Unix
It is easiest to install Git on Linux using the preferred package manager of your Linux distribution.

Unfortunately, if I follow this advice, I get an obsolete version which doesn’t have the functionality I require.

The other possibility is that a newer version may be hosted on a third party repository, but I’ve been burned by those before. I actually ended up having to uninstall all software I had ever downloaded from those repos, because it created pointless artificial conflicts (personal favourite: "Protected multilib versions: libvdpau x.yy.el6.x86_64 != libvdpau x.yy.el6.rf.x86_64", where x and yy are identical) and actively impeded the operation of my system (because somebody thought it would be a good idea for there to be no way to ignore an update operation, even if it failed). On top of that, I discovered that the indexes weren’t very well-maintained, and had a nasty tendency not to be dependency-complete (i.e. for some package X which depended on package Y you might have to hunt down and install package Y manually).

Occasionally, websites offer standalone packages which you can install manually, but this is obviously even more prone to dependency problems, and somewhat defeats the point of having packages in the first place. On top of that, the RPM format which my distro uses is a niche one which isn’t widely supported, so the chance of such downloads either existing or being up-to-date is small.

That, as I have been forced to resort to on so many occasions, leaves only building from source. Which I can do without the aid of the whole bloody package management edifice at all.

I can’t believe I’m the only person who has suffered problems caused by the existence of package managers in and of themselves. Have I been exceptionally and consistently unlucky over the last year, or are you all in denial?

It’s on the bleedin’ web page for the application – the same as any other download link and it’s discovered by non-PackMan using users in the exact same way as anything else: Google et al.

I think you’ll find that Martin has correctly remembered the thread that I’m thinking of, so no, it’s not on the bleedin’ web page. That was the whole point. (It might be now, of course; I’ve not checked in a while.)

In fact, when I wrote about the release in question for Archive, I also ended up covereing PackMan (encouraging readers to try it out) and then explained how it could be used to find the zip files for the aforementioned piece of software (and others in the same boat) — without that, there was no easy way to provide a long-term-safe download link in the article. You might wish to check your facts…