Hi, On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Mateusz Viste <mate...@viste-family.net> wrote: > > I do agree with Rugxulo. Just adding my 2cts regarding FDUpdate (I'm the one > responsible for creating the monster).
BTW, I knew you'd read this, so no disrespect intended (obviously), your work is always appreciated, but it's just a tough situation to handle properly. :-( > The idea of FDUpdate was to provide some kind of semi-graphical > manager that would allow the average joe to add/update whatever > packages in its system. > > FDUpdate is, however, just a nifty frontend. In the background it > calls wget or htget (the downloader backend is configurable) to > download the *.zip files into a temp directory, and then it calls > FDPKG to install these zip files. > > I quite quickly lost hope, as the whole packaging work was way > more than what I could ever handle on my free time... and without > packages, a packager is, well, useless. > > In other words - don't put any hope into using FDUPDATE for any > serious update of your FreeDOS system. FDUPDATE will probably > never be useable - unless suddenly there is an army of volunteers > that starts massively populating the FDUPDATE repository (which > is highly unlikely to ever happen anyway). If only it were even that simple (and no, we don't have a lot of relevant volunteers, sadly). Sometimes an "upgrade" changes, breaks, or worsens things, whether unintentionally or otherwise. Sometimes files get renamed or split into separate utils. What to do about config files? Probably have to edit those manually anyways. And you'd of course not want to change hardware or software requirements for the worse, at least not without huge warnings. And then you need backups (.EXEs only or whole .ZIPs?). And all of that is IF (doubtful) you have a working packet driver and IF (doubtful) the repo is updated with recent stuff. DJGPP also has (had?) an experimental updater too (pakke), but again, I've never tried it. I always end up manually installing and handling things. Sure, it's more work, but there is no quick fix. Usually I want latest and greatest too (for vanity??), but that's not always appropriate, esp. with compilers or similar tools, so I keep lots of .ZIP archives around in order to re-install or temporarily install for a quick use or whatever. Half my HD usage is probably .ZIP backups (original downloads, I mean, not manual installs compressed). And sometimes I do have several different versions of something installed with various names, e.g. NASM, CWSDPMI. Sometimes I customize them to use a wrapper BLAH.BAT and rename the original .EXE to _blah.exe . You just have to be kinda paranoid and very careful as sometimes things break without realizing why, so you have to eliminate any possible room for error. It's often said that "if something works, don't change it!" because you're not guaranteed the same stability. In other words, for example, don't upgrade WinXP to Win7 unless you know what you're doing!! :-) These days, I do have write access to the FD iBiblio mirror, and I have tried to keep a lot of little things updated, so it should be okay, but of course I'm easily distracted, and there is always plenty more that could (potentially) be done. Some things change so fast anyways that it's almost pointless to upgrade for every minor point release. But hey, I'm open to suggestions. Perhaps a repo for "BASE only" would be a good compromise (though most of it is frozen / stable). That's the core stuff that we really "need". Maybe "UTIL" too, but that's less critical. Though how would you handle 3rd-party patches? I was wondering recently whether we need a good place for things like that. But it's easy for things to get lost in the shuffle, so I often want to put things online somewhere so they don't disappear forever. Not always easy. :-/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
