I’ve more or less drifted away from the Amiga but still have my Amiga setup and lately have been kind of drifting away from Windows. I’ve mostly been drifting towards Linux but the Amiga has always been there in my mind too. I’ve had an idea kicking around in the back of my head for years. The problem that is the seed for the idea has come up to bite me lately in my dealings with Linux.
The problem is one of software installation, organization and dependency. The install of the AOS on my Amiga has been built over years and years. Tweaking here and there since ’89. I don’t even trust allowing the OS upgrades to install themselves because it could seriously mess my system up. I have a copy of 3.5 and 3.9. Neither one were installed because I didn’t want to mess things up. How often do Amiga users wipe and reinstall their systems? I’ve never really done that, mainly because of all the programs and glue code (libraries, devices, etc) needed to make things work to my satisfaction.
Needless to say I have a lot of dead weight in my system that I’ve had to remove or isolate from time to time.
My idea is in a series of steps, design an Amiga package management system, which would include the following things:
Amiga Package Management standard
Standard archive layout
Standard system layout to optimize use of assigns and files per-directory
Layout scripting for installation and removal of software
Dependency Tracking
APM Builder to build APMs from
Various Amiga OS disks to a special OS-APM archive
Commercial software installers
Freeware installers and archives
Data packages (icons, backgrounds, etc)
APM Client
Installs and Removes APM archives on a APM built system
Reports dependency requirements before installing
Online repository for certified freeware APM archives.
The build of the special OS-APM archive would allow the user to gather all their various OS disks and versions into one location to burn to CD. By including all the OS disks they have, they can take advantage of features from the various system releases that were removed later. The APM system and layout would be built in with this during the build. The user could then use a floppy bootable APM client disk to install their Amiga OS. During the build of the OS-APM from the various disks, system files could be replaced with Open Source clones of the files.
