Repostories are full of garbage
 

Sorry for offending title.

Have you mentioned, that in repositories there are applications/games which are tottally useless or which are abandoned and which doesnt work?
These apliccations just take place and make false hopes. Some of them should be deleted or there isnt anyone who check the stuff if it does the job it says? Someone like moderator on forums. Or are there any rules what can and what cant go into repositories?

I am more into gaming so I tried lot of emulators on n900:
DeSmuMe: emulator for nintendo DS - doesnt work, lags, crappy resolution. And author refused to work on it. So why it is still there? This apliccation just made me happy for few minutes when I was hoping that I can play DS games on n900. ********, I cant.

Flash launcher: lags same like in browser, but launcher is good.

VCMI heores3: doesnt work until they work out the resoulution (And they said that this will most likely not happen)

VGBA: lags as hell and was abandoned,there is even better emulator which is under development

Prboom: Doom emulator, works pretty well and does the job what it says, but crappy resolution (can be fixed via xterm), you cant type numbers into menu, and some more problems. This application is not finished, and is not under development anymore. (not useless aplication, just an example how developers abandon their work)

I bet that there is a lot of more useless stuff in repositories, which was abandoned and which doesnt work. I don´t have time to try all crap like Necromantion stone wallpaper.

I dont want to start a flame with developers, I know you have put a lot of time to these things, I am not a developer or anything similiar, my coding skills are pretty much zero, I just dont like when there is something unfinished.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

You should stick with extras and OVI store only. There isn't 'crap' there. The apps are free..and you're still complaining?

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

Are these in Extras? If so you should be able to use the star rating to determine whether people think they are any good.

Having the ratings and feedback info integrated in the Application Manager (or some App Manager) would be good, someone needs to do the work though.

Going back to broken apps, it should be possible for those that require fixes and have no active devs to simply be downloaded (the source), fixed and then resubmitted, assuming there's someone who's actually interested in them.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

I think you are raising a very important topic, and the one that definitely requires community attention. Being an expert in software quality assurance, you should probably create your own repository for N900 software, only containing high-quality well-supported software titles hand-picked by yourself and other quality software experts. Once you do that, advertise your repository to all the N900 users eagerly awaiting such a repository.

Happy New Year and good luck in your endeavors.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

If I stick with OVI i could revert back to n70 :)
You are right that these apps are free and its not nice from me to complain. I was just used to that on n70 (I had it for 5 years) everything worked as it should, all gameboy emulars worked without lag, Doom worked as it should,...

you make me laugh, thanks :D

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

Many of the applications you quoted are still in Devel or Testing, so they HAVE to be unfinished, whether you like it or not.

About Prboom and VGBA: i managed to finish both Doom and Doom 2, many expansions of them, and a few GBA games at a pefectly playable speed. Many PC emulators can't do that, and many games will never work on a emulator without problems, so this is an amazing goal for those free and open-source applications on a tablet IMO.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

err thats a fact i forget :/

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

It is dead obvious that even programs in extras-devel should be periodically reviewed to determine whether they should still be there. Otherwise, extras-devel would be a great place to leave malware or spam or whatever.

Hopefully, it is watched from time to time. I install lots of stuff and rarely find something actually bad.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

just a thought - maybe the ones that never made it out to testing
get moved off (after some nominal interval - perhaps 12months) to a section called 'archives' ?
The coding in those should never be simply discarded because
the original author (or someone else) may come along and resume development.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

I think you have hit on a good idea there. It would be really good to know which apps are currently being developed and which aren't. I don't know how much trouble it would be to keep a repository like this up to date, but it's definately a good idea.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D
I love these kind of threads

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

Of those listed. only prdoom and vgba are in extras. if you're not working on the other apps yourself and testing your new versions of them. or testing and rating someone else's packages in extras-testing while keeping a backup of your n900 and having flasher-3.5 ready for when it goes wrong, you probably shouldn't have extras-devel or extras-testing enabled at all.

As for extras proper, I agree it shouldn't have broken stuff or stuff that's dangerous.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

May I humbly guess that, while K1ll3rm4n has extras-testing and extras-devel enabled on his N900, he has never bothered rating any of the apps he installs from these repositories? Given the dismal overall quality of the apps in these repos (or "garbage", as K1ll3rm4n eloquently called them), it is no wonder that he is not voting for them, don't you think?

Also, it is quite possible that the community has not made the sufficient effort to inform K1ll3rm4n of the voting mechanism that governs the app promotion from extras-testing to extras. I am sure we should all be ashamed of ourselves for not doing enough to keep K1ll3rm4n informed of the opportunities available to him at maemo.org. Right? RIGHT? RRRIGHT?

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

I don't see any reason why this thread shouldn't be deleted or merged into one of the other whining threads.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

Is time going to fix this issue like it fixes every urgency or problem? Even if nothing is done for it :) I mean if Meego ever comes all application not ported to it will vanish...

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

Reposted for emphasis - yes absolutely correct
I forget all the time to vote and when i remember
need to do all the same searching and digging to get back to the
proper place to actually do so.
It is not as if there is a notice floating around in my browser
or the n900 itself to remind us 'did you vote on this app you just installed?'
And I would bet there are a majority of people here who have never
even heard about how important the voting is...

The system is not broken but it sure needs some improvements.

We need some kind of voting system in place that
is accessible in an application manager perhaps?
This would help keep votes relevant to what we actually use maybe.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

Ye, you are rrright that I didnt voted/ commented any application becouse I get all apps dirrectly from repositories, I dont even remember when I visited download section last time.

I guess that thing is resolved so you can lock/delete this thread, thanks

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

Perhaps this guy should be in charge of clean up...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7gIpuIVE3k

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

I'm against the idea of closing down a thread just because it is negative. This is a valid point, not so much for extras-devel since only those pointed to very specific apps should be using those, but that in extras-testing sometimes there are apps that just aren't worth testing and you don't know that.

The community currently has two different mechanisms which have both been mentioned already.

The extras-testing voting is meant to make sure the applications have a certain level of very basic quality (shouldn't harm device, should be able to do basic promised functions) before going into the end-user repository of Extras. This is done through yes/no and comments.

There is then the Maemo download page which allows viewing of download statistics, rating, and comments.

The feedback loop for these has not been the best. The more steps to do something the less likely people will do it. Someone (Atilla?) has been working on KISSTester to help with the extras-testing voting. There is another app called App Downloader which was being developed to allow browsing of the repository with being able to view votes and vote on them. I am unsure what the current status of either of these applications is (would be cool if that was integrated into Faster Application Manager).

Texrat is leading up an effort in Meego to try to have all of these things pulled together. Through their whole BOSS system they hope to have both work flows integrated into things.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

I don't see anything wrong with the original post. Bullies can attack the original poster and call for the thread to be closed, but I don't think that is appropriate or necessary.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

many sites for open source applications (freshmeat for example) give VERY CLEAR details of development progress, which in turn can give people a fair idea if the application is actually being worked on.
It's of note that not all applications when using app manager provide a "description" under details.
Making this mandatory with a changelog would be a quick and easy way for users to actually find out if an application has been sitting in the repo for months and months with no active development.

including a separate "archive" repo (as previously suggested) to move apps that have had no devel for more than 12 months would also clean things up
just my two cents.....

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

For extras, a description is mandatory so soon after getting into -testing it should have one if it doesn't. For -devel, well, if you don't know exactly what it is, you shouldn't run it.

At least one problem we ran into with changelogs is how much to show? Who knows when the user last updated and the way it was handled HAM didn't have a good way to grab all the changes inbetween.

Faster Application Manager allows for changelogs but that is because it queries maemo.org/packages for the information (I think?) which isn't too fast for a single package.

-devel only really needs tidying for performance, you should know what you are touching and who the author is before touching a package. -testing is the one that could use cleanup since it is an in between and an assortment of people ("usually" testers) load up any application.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

@ epage.

Knowing what you're installing is a basic requirement for any OS.
That begins with knowing if you actually need it in the first place.

Being able to quickly determine (via changelog) if an application is actually under continuous devel/improvement is one way of helping to decide if an application is going to provide a suitable solution to your needs......
The "how much of the changeleog do we show" bit, I agree, is a challenge, especially with devs who do a lot of updating to their packages........

Personally, it doesn't bother me that much. I only install what I need and usually do a bit of research beforehand.
In fact, with the exception of fMMS, Wireless hotspot and a few others,the N900 gives me pretty much everything I need out of the box. The rest of it is falls into "bonus stuff to have" and "entertainemnt value" :)