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wow, keep your temper!

dont force me to use my superpowers to crush you for the good of the community!

you don't need to use your superpowers
he didn't meant it like stupid, but like naiv...

Well if it doesn't happen I guess Maemo is a community just for guys who are tweakers and like to play with new things and not for mainstream then.

Still sticking with my N900 though love it.

But i need an EXCUSE to use my superpowers on someone!

i would to add something to the thread, but there are more than enough

I am a software developer, I can give you a fake scenario:

let's say you make a program that saves where wifi networks are located on a map interface. You set on a map some pinpoints, and it will remember what wifi network to choose when you are near those pin points. It gets your location based off your GPS.

lets say when you are at the home location, always try to connect to the wifi network called "MyNet".

OK. you are the developer, and you write this little app, and guess what? it works great!!! you are so excited that you quickyl throw it on to the extras-devel so that everyone can enjoy the app you made!

suddenly emails come flooding in:
when the wifi network is down, it doesn't stop trying. you forgot to add code to only try X amount of times.

when the password is wrong, it doesn't stop trying, it hammers the network and won't pause long enough for you to change the password.

turns out that one of the files that it needs comes from one of the extra packages you installed separately (QT 4.6 or whatever) and your program doesn't 1. Tell people that this dependency is needed or 2. Prevent people from installing unless this is installed

If you are in range of 2 wifi network locations at the same time, it will disconnect one, then go to the other, then disconnect that one, then connect back to the other in a constant back / forth untill youare out of range of both.

When you are typing in your wifi network encryption, you totally forgot to add WEP encryption,and you only programmed WPA. I guesswhen you developed it, your network used WPA so you never even considered WEP.

You never included a manual override to turn it off, the only way to turn it off is to un install the app!!

When you programmed the uninstall, you tell the program to delete all the files that were in use, however this accidentally includes the QT 4.6 dependencies!! now other apps dont work!!


the possibilities are endless. As a programmer, you need to think of all of these, but hey we're all human, and sometimes there are scenarios (known in the programming work as "use cases") that were either never considered, or not thought of as possible.

You made the app for you, and it worked for you. Iron out all the bugs from extras devel first.

I personally feel once its out of there and into extras-testing, the program should be safe, because it means most, or all of the major problems are taken care of, and small glitches may exist here or there.

hope this helps.

"Bricking" hardly ever happens (and you can always reflash) but ignoring the warnings is the main reason why the forum is full of "Why can't I install the update!? Nokia sucks!11" posts appearing after every system update release... Resulting from package/dependency conflicts and many devel-packages consuming too much rootfs space.

Yeah, Maemo might just be that, or not. But the particular packages you mentioned are a bit controversial, as emulators basically have a lot of copyright issues. It may prevent them from going all the way up through the system.

It's easier to start by saying it's very dangerous, this usually have the desired effect on those that do not have the skills or interest to restore the device to a working configuration after something got messed up, <sarcasm>we can call them the sheeple</sarcasm>.

Then explain the real risks and potential consequences to those that still remain who usually are capable of making their own risk-assessment and act accordingly.

Because nobody wants to listen to a somebody who should have known better whine.

That said it's not really that dangerous (study the risks and make your own decision anyway, don't come whining to me, Nokia or anyone else on the forum, if you don't know how to write proper bug reports just shut up and reflash, if you do please take the time to inform the developer), extras-devel is definitely a lot riskier than extras-testing (which is consider, for me, low risk)

Well, attempting to free up rootfs space using a script attached to a maemo.org HOWTO led to my browser not working. Trying to fix the browser led to my device being bricked, as in caught in a reboot loop. Bricking does happen, and a full rootfs partition seems to be the most common reason for that.

The most common reason for a full rootfs is installing packages, and most of the packages that take a lot of rootfs space, are in extras-devel.

Actually, most of any kind of packages are in extras-devel. This includes useful, stable packages that just haven't been voted up yet, and updates to packages that have been voted up but not yet updated.

I agree with rambo!