Hi,
> On Mar 27, 2020, at 11:03 PM, Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user
> <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Jerome, Eric!
>
>
> On Friday, March 27, 2020 1:16 PM, Jerome Shidel jer...@shidel.net
> <mailto:jer...@shidel.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Eric,
> I took a quick look.
> There is some minor confusion and package issues and they cannot be replace
> the current packages “AS-IS”.
> At a glance…
> Are they all newer than the ones already in the repo?
>
> Since the author did not assign explicit version numbers, I had been
> generating version numbers based on the date of the most recent modification
> in the change log section of the readme file. However, since some changes
> were to the documentation only and did not affect the code, this resulted in
> a newer version number than the existing package despite the included binary
> being identical. I had listed the "makeshift" versions on my site, but not to
> the individual LSM files in hopes I could dig up some "real" final version
> numbers somewhere. These issues have all been fixed in the versions I
> uploaded today - all versions listed are pulled directly from the binaries
> themselves, the LSM files have been modified accordingly, and I also updated
> the descriptions of the packages to further indicate the differences between
> my packages and any existing ones on the ibiblio list.
That is understandable.
As a side note…
The repository management utilities require a version (along with things like
title and some other mandatory fields). The version information must be unique.
No two packages with the same filename can have the same version. If a version
3.34 is in the repo, you cannot add the same package as version 3.34. You would
need to update its ism to something like 3.34b, 3.34-1, 3.34.1 or whatever.
There is no specified format for version information. This like “5.13.19”,
“2019-05-13”, “19-May-13 (pre-1, RP ed)” and etc are all fine.
In the ones I looked at, the Entered-date field in your packages looked fine.
But, I figured I’d mention that it is strict format of YYYY-MM-DD. This is
enforced by the repo management software to provide a uniform look across all
packages.
Just some more notes on LSM metadata files.
The required Description field should be fairly short and preferably one good
sentence to describe the package.
There are a couple addition fields the repo knows that are used for various
things like html pages and RSS feeds. None of them are required.
Summary: A more detailed description of the package.
Changes: Simple note on what has changed since the last version.
Modified-date: Formatted as YYYY-MM-DD.nn and if not present will be
automatically stamped with the current date by the repo. Eventually, this may
be used by software instead of trying to parse version numbers.
> For example…, RDISK shows no version in package, web page says 2011-04-25.
> Repo version is 2015-03-05.
>
> Can one of you point me to the existing RDisk package (and XMgr too, if one
> exists)? I only found SRDisk on the ibiblio list.
>
At present…
There are two main FreeDOS software repos.
The Official FreeDOS software Repository — (html interface)
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/index.html
<http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/index.html>
My unofficial repository —
http://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/comparison.html
<http://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/comparison.html>
The Official repo is where all the packages for a FreeDOS release come from.
Some packages do not exist on it for various reasons.
My repo is far less strict. As long as it can be legally distributed, I’m
willing to include it. It contains all the packages and versions that are in
the Official repo plus more versions and packages that are not present.
Sometimes, packages are pushed here prior to being approved for inclusion on
the Official repo.
At present, neither RDISK or XMGR exist on the Official Repo.
https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/rdisk.html
<https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/rdisk.html>
https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/xmgr.html
<https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/xmgr.html>
The others are on both repos.
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/himemx.html
<https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/himemx.html>
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/udvd2.html
<https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/udvd2.html>
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/uide.html
<https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/uide.html>
Someday… Programs like FDIMPLES will be capable of fetching packages and
updates from multiple online repositories.
> HIMEMX contains two EXE versions? Why?
>
> According to the readme: "Currently there are 2 versions of HimemX supplied,
> HimemX and HimemX2. HimemX2 uses a different strategy when it comes to
> extended memory block allocations.”
Ah, Ok. I was just curious.
> Where is the License file that was in previous versions?
>
> Japheth no longer includes it, instead he added a License section to the
> readme file.
Ok.
However, the package LSM Copying Policy probably should be updated to
General Public License, Artistic license and Public Domain
or maybe
See Readme.txt
or something else.
> All packages extract sources to the SOURCE path. This is a problem if the
> user selects install sources. For example, both UHDD and UIDE contain a
> SOURCE\CC.ASM file. This will collide and cause package installation to fail
> with FDNPKG and FDINST.
>
> I see that could be problematic, even if they are the same file. I could
> separate CC into its own package, perhaps. Any thoughts from you guys on
> whether or not that's an appropriate way to handle this issue?
Easiest way is just put them under a subdirectory like….
SOURCE\UIDE\*
SOURCE\UDVD\*
SOURCE\RDISK\*
etc
> Some other docs seem to be missing. Like UIDE\UIDE.TXT. (may no longer be
> needed, IDK)
>
> This file was not included in the driver pack from which I split off the
> individual packages, but the existing readme has its own collection of
> technical notes. From that I conclude it no longer applies to the current
> version.
No problem.
> Unfortunately, I don’t have the spare time to dedicate to carefully go over,
> verify and adjust them at present.
>
> No problem, I understand how time-consuming this can be!
:-)
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