APMS Public Beta
Date 24-May-2005 19:39:10
Topic: Software News
| Ive just released the APMS ( Amiga Package Management System ) tool for public beta testing on os4depot. Rather than delay it further while fixing some remaining bugs Im hoping that you folks will take a look at it, join the mailing list and suggest features.
Read on for more information.
PHASE 1, build 001xa
What it is
APMS is a package management system designed to cope with packages in its own APMS format (which handle dependency information, keep an eye on test reports etc ) as well as handling the retrieval and installation management of packages NOT in APMS format.
As the majority, at this stage, are in non APMS format ( lha, tar, zip ) the first phase released will address installation and retrieval of those packages.
The second phase, if we don't abandon it through despair, is to handle APMS format, the test report mechanism ( which will - I hope - attach to the grim reaper task and allow you to report faulty packages to a test database ) and its advanced uninstall/install mechanism and fine grain ( actual inventoried contents with version numbers ) manifest information. For now put phase 2 out of your minds.
Problems
* Install/Uninstall does nothing due to annoying bugs in unpacking data.
* Lots of debug output.
* Whatever you find wrong.
* More output needed during resync to let you know its doing stuff.
What you can test
OK, the sql-passthrough code isn't tested in alpha stage at all yet, sorry, meant to do that but want feedback sooner rather than later. This means in order to 'fetch' a package to your APMS: tree you will need to specify its category ( as it appears on os4depot - our current test server of choice ) and its packagename.
Thus, for example, you can do:
apms fetch utility/filetool amidisk.lha
This should go ahead, check your local cache, compare the version there ( if its there ) with the version on os4depot. If it finds it needs to update it, it will. If it finds that package is up to date and present, it will just return to you.
Ordinarily, you would then do:
apms install utility/filetool amidisk.lha
Except thats still too buggy ( unpacking causes a guru - Im not sure why yet ). As that isn't ready, apms uninstall also does nothing.
apms info [category] [package] should return information on the local package data on that specific category and packge combination.
apms search [string] should return all packages in the cache or local package data that matches the string.
apms update is disabled.
apms updateall I havent tried, but the rest of the code in that section works so let me know. In order for it to actually do anything a package has to have been updated on os4depot.net.
apms resync is a vital command, it resyncs the entire database. You need to do this at least once, then after do an apms resync latest just to pick up the recent list. Eventually this will change, I hope, to passing os4depot a query string to get what has changed since the last time it was run.
apms automatically tries the most reliable mirror first, as we only have one mirror, os4depot.net, thats participating ( yet ) but once more mirrors are configured to work this way, they will appear in the mirror list on the os4depot server which you will AUTOMATICALLY pick up on a resync.
apms help works, and has commands there for all the apms-lite ( Amiga style package handling ) commands that will get implemented in phase 1.
Ive found a bug! What now!
Well done, its probably a target rich environment right now, pop along to the mailing list ( details for subscribing below ) and report the problem. It might be 'self inflicted' but I am still interested in hearing how the product gets used as it develops.
Always run apms help version to get the build version number to report in your bug 
The mailing list
Send an email to apms_tester-subscribeATyahoogroups.co.uk to subscribe, the list is:
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/apms_tester/
Its a moderated, private list.
Download:
apms.tar.gz
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