Package Manager - Screenshot

[Dr. Fred]

The problem with Dr. Fred's Package Manager is that it will become very cluttered whenever you start expanding the categories.

No, it's a tree view ! You can create SubCategories (like "browsers" for Internet) and SubSubCategories, if that's not enough.

[Dr. Fred]

I've just noticed the discussion page on the wiki.
I've answered to some questions there.

[MadRat]

I've just noticed the discussion page on the wiki.
I've answered to some questions there.

I see you are going to use a 3 step process for programs.

Ever thought about making it more of a BitTorrent/P2P approach for distribution? Files could first be looked for locally - within a masked network ring, on a dedicated network distribution server, or across other machines within its own AD Domain - before going to the trouble of pulling the entire package off the internet. If the packages were broken down into chunks, and each chunk had its own checksum, multiple machines could be used to simultaneously pull across the file(s) to the machine that needs them. Free file splitters like HJSPLIT (from http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/) is a simple way to break up your files. (What I like about this one is that its 130K for the GUI version and 10K for the commandline one; the joiner is 44K.)

The joining process is near instant, and a secondary checksum for the finished product would verify success. By using a random order for pulling from the original source, and infrequent polling for local sources, you could theoretically kill alot of the distribution time. We deploy files at work in a similar manner to this. We leave files in the swap space until it begins to fill up and then purge oldest files first. Its simple, its fast, and it cut down on a large amount of router traffic when doing security updates.

Something akin to this would fit within your pre-install process. I never liked M/S's way of pulling patches down from the internet. They should have had better built in support for locking security patch deployment within a AD Domain at the least.

[a2z]

I hate Synaptic --well, not really.

But, it sure could be improved at least in one GUI/user friendly way: It installs thing in the way it thinks is right and that's it.

As far as libs and other CLI stuff is concerned I have no qualms about Synaptic's behavior, but in the case of GUI stuff it sucks:

I have no sane way of telling it where I
want that application's menu item(s) be
installed --or even know where ithas put
them. The only way is to second guess or
hunt around in the Start menu..

I do hope yours dont overlook this.

[Gedi]

The Dev-C++ package manager is nice and the source is available to get some ideas from, although it's in delphi

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[Dr. Fred]

But, it sure could be improved at least in one GUI/user friendly way: It installs thing in the way it thinks is right and that's it.

No you will be able to choose the install part.

Yes the dev-c++ think doesn't look bad either but it's desigines for few, smaler packages. More a updater, then a real package manager.

PS: Dev-C++ is written in Delphi ??

[Elledan]

PS: Dev-C++ is written in Delphi ??

Well, it's a front-end for MingW, so it doesn't really matter what it's written in, right?

[roytam]

Maybe cygwin's setup program is an example of this.

[Gedi]

PS: Dev-C++ is written in Delphi ??

Yeah, the whole thing is written in Delphi. Great lanuage, it's what VB should have been.

[Elledan]

Maybe cygwin's setup program is an example of this.

The Cygwin setup program is an example of torture and a direct violation of UI-principles and Human rights. It symbolizes everything which can be hated about displaying long lists of items in a single tree.

If it were only 1% more userfriendly it would save me already 10 minutes for a regular install.

[frik85]

ReactOS's Package Manager 0.3 (pre-alpha):

http://reactos.com/wiki/index.php/React ... ge_Manager


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[Bond007s]

Why not make it similar in design to http://www.versiontracker.com/subscribe ... indows+3.5. That would at least make it super easy to use. However keep up the work on the ReactOS Package Manager. It is a great idea in any way.