Apms

APMS BetaTesters
-----------------------

PHASE 1, build 001xa

Welcome to the beta list for APMS, its going to take some while to get this as
elegant and as pretty as I'd like and I would like to thank you for
volunteering
to test out the package management tool.

The list of what you can do is below, along with a list of problems. Please pay
careful attention to 'problems' before you start.

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.

Installing
-----------

Unpack the APMS beta archive somewhere on your hard disk, somewhere with a lot
of space as APMS will create a package cache there.

Assign the base of this APMS:
Execute PATH APMS:bin ADD
Run apms resync

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-subscribe()yahoogroups.co.uk to subscribe, the list
is:
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/apms_tester/

Its a moderated, private list.