BerryBoot

I’m wondering if BerryBoot can be used for the installation of the RISC OS image for the RasPi.
http://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot

Right now, I’d guess not, because RISC OS Pi isn’t behaving like the Linuxes. It’s basically using a hacked filesystem that has a FAT and a Filecore partition overlapping, as I understand, right now.

Nevertheless upgrade is easily possible by a simple copy (under RISC OS) of ‘!Boot.Loader.RISCOS/IMG’ over the top of your !Boot on the SD card. So !Store could be used to do this with appropriate instructions for the user: the download will (automatically) open the archive file that has been downloaded, showing a ‘ReadMe’ file and a directory ‘!Boot’. The only barrier is that the ‘RISCOS/IMG’ file (the new ROM image) isn’t ready yet!

I think Stewart is referring to installing the RISC OS partition from inside Linux.

Which, right now, as far as I know, is impossible, until RISC OS gets proper partition support, and the hackish partitioning can be undone.

That appears to be Linux only, but hopefully something like this, using RISC OS as the launching platform is in the pipeline.

So !Store could be used to do this with appropriate instructions for the user

I think you mean !PackMan. That is the route we will be sending out updates to ROM images for the RPi.

I suspect either could, but packman makes more sense.

(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?)

!PackMan doesn’t support commercial software, !Store does. (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.)

I suspect either could, but packman makes more sense. (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 think R-Comp are aiming Store at everyone, including those who are ideologically opposed to RiscPkg due to its fixed installation paths and the fact that it’s a concept borrowed from Linux.

(The real WTF, though, is why there’s overlap between the two. NetSurf for instance.

See above. Some users won’t touch RiscPkg with a bargepole (and are never going to, whatever other people say), so offering stuff via Store as well doesn’t hurt.

And why the Pi image doesn’t use the NetSurf package in !PackMan, to keep things updated.)

No idea. NetSurf is distributed via its own repository, IIRC; maybe that has something to do with it?

See above. Some users won’t touch RiscPkg with a bargepole (and are never going to, whatever other people say), so offering stuff via Store as well doesn’t hurt.

RickPkg has been superceded by Packman. The version of Packman supplied with the Raspberry Pi has the ability to move installed packages to wherever you want or create stubs that point to the installed location.
The source code to Packman is also freely available so anyone can contribute changes.

If someone will point me in the direction of a NetSurf package I’ll happily include it. NS were only packaging test builds (not stable releases) and even the test builds have now stopped. I can merge other repositories with no problems.

Two separate programs: developed at the same time, and different goals. !Store do no installation – it just gives you a zip to unpack yourself. It doesn’t do upgrades. PackMan does auto-installation and auto-upgrades. That makes it much more complex, and needs more structure on the part of packages (just dumping the contents of a zip in a directory tends not to work or be pleasant for anything but the simplest things). As Chris says, it can now move things around to wherever you want. For those ideologically opposed, packages are just zipfiles that can be manually installed if you prefer.

There’s nothing against PackMan doing commercial software, just that nobody has written that support. !Store has that commercial motive behind it, PackMan hasn’t thus far. Getting it right (doing all the credit card stuff and making sure programs are only available to those who have paid) is sufficiently complex that if R-Comp are willing to put that into !Store, it’s one less thing for PackMan to worry about.

I hope to write some documentation on using PackMan and building packages when I get a spare moment. Also need to work on allowing developers to submit packages – have had my hands full with the core RPi release up till now…

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.

I think, ideally store should support the same riscpkg delivery method as packman and use it whenever possible. Then there would be no issue with duplication.

I think, ideally store should support the same riscpkg delivery method as packman and use it whenever possible.

I agree. In future versions of !Store (and when we’re all happy the RiscPkg stuff works as everyone needs it to) I think migrating over in that direction would be an essential step. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually.

“Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.”

Sorry, couldn’t resist. It’s my favourite film:-)

I was tempted to say that, but chickened out.

There’s talk about adding RISC OS to BerryBoot on here (Use browser search with ‘RISC’ to find the start of the thread). Sorry, I’m not sure if it went anywhere, as I’ve not got time to read it all now… (Apologies if the link embedding isn’t right, I’ve not tried it on here before, here’s the URL just in case http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=249559)