
My sixth day with Haiku: Under the hood of resources, icons, and packages - waddlesplash
https://medium.com/@probonopd/my-sixth-day-with-haiku-under-the-hood-of-resources-icons-and-packages-abec8d0e4ec6
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AnIdiotOnTheNet
I value probono's opinion on these things because he has a similar disdain for
package managers as I do and a similar conception of the way things should be.
Unfortunately he has so far only confirmed my belief that adding a package
manager to Haiku just made things more complicated. Sure, he recommends some
behind-the-scenes magic that can make it a little better, but that's never
going to be as good as just being simple in the first place.

Also disheartening (though not at all surprising) is the developer response to
this: "We optimized for the most usual usecases here. If there is actually a
demand for this beyond one user, we can implement". That's my problem with
"magic", it only appears to work the way you expect until your usecase falls
outside of the expected, then the illusion is destroyed.

The HVIF format sounds like a really good idea. If I ever get around to making
my own desktop environment, which is looking more and more likely to be the
only way I can escape the dystopia laid out for personal computing's future, I
might use it.

~~~
waddlesplash
> Unfortunately he has so far only confirmed my belief that adding a package
> manager to Haiku just made things more complicated.

You keep saying this. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Package managers add a certain kind of complexity to parts of the system that,
without it, would indeed be "simpler." But it is an extremely powerful lever
that allows _removing_ far, far more complexity than it adds, especially when
it comes to porting software. We were very thoughtful about this tradeoff and
tried very hard to get it right.

Let me ask you this, then: You have repeatedly made this claim. How much have
you actually used Haiku, both before and then after the package manager?
Because the entire point of the package manager was to pull the complexity
away from the users and to us (the developers and maintainers), where we can
manage it and automate it away, which is what we have done. If you as a user
are seeing some issue, we would greatly like to know about it so we can solve
it.

> Sure, he recommends some behind-the-scenes magic that can make it a little
> better, but that's never going to be as good as just being simple in the
> first place.

If it were truly about simplicity, don't you think Apple would have done it
already? Or some other company -- that is, being simpler means spending less
time and money; and any company that could save money and turn more or the
same profit without losing customers would do it in a heartbeat.

> That's my problem with "magic", it only appears to work the way you expect
> until your usecase falls outside of the expected, then the illusion is
> destroyed.

You are using ""magic"" in scare-quotes. Why? You do know this is all code,
written by us, and which can be modified by us, or someone else, right? There
is not some file called "package_manager.cpp" which was written by someone in
a basement 30 years ago that is incomprehensible to human eyes. These are
well-thought-out systems that are designed to fit in with the rest of the
system in a coherent way.

It is also the case that "we optimized for the most usual usecases" is how
_99% of software is written_. So why are you singling out package managers, or
at least our package manager, as a problem here?

I also note it sounds like you are going a lot from theory (i.e. "I read the
package manager works this way") and not practice ("I used the package manager
and found X".) Is that right?

At least probono seems more than happy with Haiku and its model:

[15:52:55] <nepugia_q> if you are serious about wanting to make a better linux
desktop linux distro sign me up :P (have been trying to bootstrap a distro for
some time now, with much less gnu tools than we have now (and putting / on a
tmpfs and so))

[16:02:58] <probono> nepugia_q now that i have found Haiku i think we should
invest here

~~~
Accacin
I'd just like to say thanks for working on Haiku. I enjoy playing around with
it in a VM every now and again and it's a nice change from the daily driver.

I'm a JS developer, but I enjoy learning and using C in my spare time. I'd
love to try contributing but it seems like you use C++ so it might be a few
more years :D

~~~
waddlesplash
We only use C++ as "C with Classes", not the unholy nightmare that is the STL,
so you may fit in more quickly than you expect... :)

