Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 24th Jun 2009 12:24 UTC, submitted by ralsina
There are a lot of people who believe that program and application management is currently as good as it gets. Because the three major platforms - Windows, Linux, Mac OS X - all have quite differing methods of application management, advocates of these platforms are generally unwilling to admit that their methods might be flawed, leading to this weird situation where over the past, say, 20 years, we've barely seen any progress in this area. And here we are, with yet another article submitted to our backend about how, supposedly, Linux' repository method sucks or rules.
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Member since:2006-01-19
Member since:2008-04-29
If you're a programmer, I'm sure you'll be aware that not all libraries are designed to be linked statically. For instance, many features of the Qt toolkit are unavailable when linked statically.
What's more, if a library is statically linked, and a new version of the library is released, it means that the whole application must be relinked (and probably recompiled) in order to update it. If the library were linked dynamically, it would be possible to simply replace the library file in the package before distributing it, which is far easier.
Member since:2005-11-02
I'm not talking about difficulty, I'm talking about impossibility. I was trying to ask leading questions so you'd realize your mistake.
There is simply no way to logically separate 'base' from 'applications'. Any distinction is purely arbitrary and highly mutable. Distributions do not generally have 'core' repositories, not in the way you mean. What they do have changes drastically with every release.
What the user wants is "See any application, click application, have application." There's nothing fundamentally at conflict with that in the package management world, 90% of closing the gap between reality and what the user wants is adding some good UI. The other 10% is making third party integration easier, which is a tricky but solvable problem, unlike your 'concept'.
I think it's important to note that "Centralized" package management is bad and was AFAIK never really intended to be the norm. Distributed, independent repositories is the way it ought to be done. Throwing out package management for most software is not a workable solution.
Edited 2009-06-26 11:59 UTC
Member since:2008-04-29
I'm not talking about difficulty, I'm talking about impossibility. I was trying to ask leading questions so you'd realize your mistake.
Well, I'm open to the idea that I might make mistakes
However, I don't see my mystake so far. There is simply no way to logically separate 'base' from 'applications'. Any distinction is purely arbitrary and highly mutable. Distributions do not generally have 'core' repositories, not in the way you mean. What they do have changes drastically with every release.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that the whole idea comes crashing down. 0install already has a good framework for dealing with this -- it ties in with the native package manager to determine whether or not an adequate library for the given application is already installed. I'm worried you're letting implementation details get in the way of design ideas. It may be years and years before a good system emerges, but that doesn't mean it's impossible; it means we need a clear idea of where we're going.
What the user wants is "See any application, click application, have application."
Mmm; I think what users really want is "see application; use application". They don't really care about the "having / installing" bit. That, I think, is where package managers slip up.
I think it's important to note that "Centralized" package management is bad and was AFAIK never really intended to be the norm. Distributed, independent repositories is the way it ought to be done. Throwing out package management for most software is not a workable solution.
Mmm, again -- I don't think users want to think about repositories. It's a very developer-centric idea.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2008-04-29
I'm not suggesting a complete system here -- just a concept. The point I'm making is that central package management works brilliantly for installing a missing library or command-line tool. However, package managers are a pain to use for graphical user applications, which need a more distributed and flexible approach. It's simply a pain when you come across an interesting app, but have to go through the whole process of compiling + packaging just to try it out. Mac + Windows users get to just download and try it out, why not us too?
However, to answer your question -- plenty of distros already have a concept of a "core" repo. It should actually be quite possible to have a unified system that works despite of differences in the available core packages. 0install already does a good job of this.
Finally, it's important to remember a core design principle here: consider the interface before the implementation. We need to think of how users want to use their systems, and not let difficulty of implementation get in the way of good design.