Notices

I wondered the same and it seems not too work, as my blacklist "disappeared" after the dpkg -i install of Titan's fcam-drivers. Working just within FAPMan and the repos may be another matter.....

Which brings me to: I would not mind an option in FAPMan to install a local deb file (ie hooking dpkg -i).

Great great app this,
HA

N900 really needed an app manager replacement. I have some wishes for fapman:
1. Optimize it for large number of packages. Filtering works very slowly when package list has more than 10000 entries.
2. Package list should be cached. Users should not be forced to wait as the list is read from apt. Package lists should be shown immediately after user selects Install from menu. The update should take place in background while user is browsing cached list. When update is complete it should be merged with cached version and UI should update in a way user can barely notice.
3. I would like to have an option to see live log during apt operations.

Keep up the good work!

Background update is what HAM does and I ditched it for that very reason. Every time I start it, bam. apt-worker and CPU ceil. That's what makes it slow. It takes a minute to see what version of whatever I have installed. Can't do anything while it's on because background apt locks out other apt stuff.

A slow fast app manager?

Currently both HAM and fapman do a foreground update. They both force users to wait until the update is complete and only then package list is shown. The difference between those two apps is that fapman shows more detailed information about what it is doing. I think this is a room for improvement.

What I want is that browsing packages should be possible immediately after launching fapman. The package list is propably 99.9 % the same as it was last time fapman was launched. Why not have a cached version that is accessible without a minute wait?

I guess caching state after and apt-get update is possible, but isn't it what apt cache is after all? It does build from local cache when install is clicked.

I don't know how much performance would be gained by a secondary cache, since it needs almost all details. Additionally, it negates the advantage of re-using the local cache if a user has already updated some other way.

Example, if I apt-get update from terminal, or HAM, the cache would not get that, forcing me to update again in fapman. This is bad over slow expensive connections, repos are multi-megabyte files.

Also, if the user chooses to apt-get update, it's doubling the work, rebuilding package list twice.

Apt-cache is not optimized to be used on mobile in a way it is used on N900.

Ideally an app manager should display package list after very short initialization time. And by that I mean subsecond time. I know it is feasible and I think it would render fapman even more useful and convenient for users.

Blacklisting can be done only for packages that are not yet installed. I thought that blacklisting installed packages would not make any sense, but obviously I was wrong (completely forgot about updating ). I will fix that in some future version.

Package lists are already read directly from apt's cache files on disk, I don't think having yet another cache file would make it any faster. The original cache would have to be parsed for new packages anyway... Maybe some optimizations could be done (the next version will read the cache less often as long as it's stored in memory) but the lists are several megabytes big and reading them from disk will always be limited by cpu power (parsing text) and i/o speed.

It seems that faster application manager won the system&utilities category voting in the coding competition. A big thank you to everyone who voted!

I'll release a new version (mostly bugfixes and small tweaks) once I get back to my computer after the weekend.

I'm having a problem with fapman. I installed yesterday an app, that would've allowed me to swap icons on desktops with scheduling (not ses (system events scheduler)) and can't remember it's name. I tried to look it up from the log but it was gone (I'd assume this is because I rebooted). I don't know what to do, since I can't even find it from the talk.maemo.org as an announce, nor in the Application Manager as an installed application or not even with App. Manager/fapman from downloadable apps. The thing is that since I can't find it I can't even use it. So basically I have installed an app, that I can't find to use it nor remove it, since I don't remember it's name.

What I do know is that it was from Extras-Devel/-Testing, since fapman uses only those two on my N900. So yeah, any help?

EDIT: Found it, it was in the statusbar as an applet (Desktop Activity). Took a few reboots from me to find it, heh.

This application seems awesome, but do you know when we will be able to install files with it?

Congratulations on winning the competition, hqh!

I've also got few notes...

Regarding the need to wait some time before one can access the application list: I think it should start loading it right after startup in the background, possibly indicating this is happening by some icon somewhere in the corner... It should then keep the list in memory, not load it every time I click the "Install applications" button.

About the "Theming"... I was surprised to find out fapman is written in QT, given the custom look. Why didn't you use classic buttons in the main screen? Especially that background texture really looks out of place. If you are wondering how to have button icons that would always match the theme, I was solving the same problem for my case file manager. (see the code, mostly in button.cpp) In the end I used .xpm icons. They are palette-based. In the application, I replace the white color in the icon with the button text color and the blue color with the highlight color. The obvious drawbacks are that you don't have any alpha and it doesn't work with gradients, so the icons are a bit too sharp-edged, but OTOH it always fits the theme. Its not too bad IMO, I'll see how it works out when I need some more complicated icons. Check out the screenshots in the app thread. If you find some better solution, let me know!

EDIT: Oh, and to refresh the icons in the menu after installation, I put this to the postinst file of my packages:
It seems to work... maybe you could run it after each installation? Or is this what you already tried?