HaikuDepot improvement ideas

Yes there are categories, I just booted the beta1 ISO. However, they act strangely. By default, the Show only featured packages is checked, and you see nothing in HaikuDepot. Un-check the box and the apps will show up. But then choose any category and nothing shows up, regardless of the state of that checkbox. It’s either a bug of the feature isn’t fully implemented.

Not sure what you are seeing but when show only featured is checked here only the featured packages in each category show up …

Perhaps I should double check be last I remember it worked correctly there are just much fewer featured packages.

I have to admit, I only skimmed over the last couple of dozen posts of you guys…

I don’t quite understand the call for implementing categories and filters and searches and sorting after rating. It’s already right there in HaikuDepot!

There’s a category pop-up menu, there’s a searchbox, the rating column can be sorted, dev and source packages can be made visible from the “Show” menu.

Populating the package view takes quite long on first launch, there’s a ticket about that (among many others).

Here’s how HaikuDepot was designed to work ATM:
Only applications get a category assigned, so you’ll only see dependencies, libraries etc. when you haven’t filtered a category.

So, if you look for a graphics app, you set “category = graphics” and get a list of apps. If the “Featured packages” checkbox is on, you only see the cream-of-the-crop (if that featured list were effectively managed…).
Wanna see all graphics apps? Deactivate the checkbox.
List too long? Enter a search term to limit the results.
Only interested in the best rated apps? Sort the “Rating” column.

HaikuDepot may be far from perfect, but I don’t find how it works is obscure or illogical.

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I unchecked the Show only featured packages box and there’s nothing in the list, regardless the category. It turns out it’s a bug after all - a “first start” issue.

I couldn’t have guessed that it would take a very long time to show the apps by category. To me, with Haiku booting on a 3.9 GHz machine and not showing any apps when selecting a category even after 10 minutes, it looked like a bug or “not yet implemented”. HaikuDepot says it has 210 items in the All categories list, so something is terribly wrong if the information of 210 packages cannot be parsed in a few seconds.

I should add that the VM has 512MB RAM and 1 core, so that might affect the HaikuDepot’s performance, but only 255MB RAM are used, with 253MB RAM cached. I hope this gets fixed soon.

I think i agree, except on the filtering by native / non native. As a newcomer, that’s not so important. As a experienced user, you would know. Or it being in an advanced filter tab.

What i would add is a package date so you know that, for example, redis package was made in 2014 and is has been 4years “as is”.

Actually, the package manager for developers (easy to find packages) vs for users (easy to find applications) is the more difficult topic. Even Linux Mint has 2 installed by default package managers for exactly these 2 use-cases:

  1. MintInstall for applications,
  2. Synaptic for packages.

Haikualready have 2 ( Depot and pkgman).
I really dont see the point to have more.
Adjust the Depot to the users needs, i dont care, just leave pkgman as is.

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this solution is known…
but not yet used…

…just go to HaikuDepot Server and filter it there… (btw. it is not my opinion)

https://depot.haiku-os.org

To be fair, this started out by me commenting that Featured Packages being checked by default makes no sense.

Then I suggested that filter be turned off by default and several others also be added.

Also when HaikuDepot is loading I think it would make sense to display repo status updated in either the status bar or the empty pane below the package list.

Global download status, displayed from every package manager would also be a nice to have perhaps implemented in a pop up drawer if you click on the barberpole/progress bar in the status bar.

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The original idea AFAIK was that there’s a sort of welcome screen for the user that shows a selection of apps. Which apps are “featured” could change monthly, weekly, daily… but I suspect the curating is a bit difficult(?). I dunno how it’s done actually…

The presentation of those featured packages is also not to everyone’s taste, ask @PulkoMandy. Until this is improved, we have what we have…

As mentioned in a few other posts, there’s a ticket for that already.

I think something is just wrong with your install???

Haiku depot doesn’t take terribly long to display on even my ancient machines. PII-PIII class hardware.

Do you have a different locale set than english … apparently there is a known bug where some locales take ery very long to populate HaikuDepot. For instance I think english is like a couple seconds even on a slow machine, and Russian takes minutes.

It’s a live session of the beta1, so everything is as it was set by the Haiku developers.

Is this a USB image one you DD’ed to a drive or did you use the installer to put it on a drive?

It’s the official 32-bit beta1 iso, booted inside VirtualBox.

You need to wait until haikudepot finishes refreshing , in order for the categories to show anything, it can take a few minutes if your connection is slow.

To make this crystal-clear, in one post:

  • VirtualBox, 1 CPU core at 3.9 GHz, 512 MB RAM;
  • 100 Mbps internet connection;
  • official 32-bit beta1 iso;
  • All categories + Show only featured packages unchecked: 210 items displayed (quite fast);
  • Choosing any category and even waiting more than 10 minutes doesn’t show any software.

I am a big fan of having a “native app” tag, but I would not filter on it by default. You don’t want the list of available apps to seem smaller than it is, and also new users may not care about it - specifically if they are looking for some software they are used to on another platform. This is probably a feature that will appeal more to experienced Haiku / BeOS users or developers.

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This! —^ And agreed on optional filters, both for “native” and anything else useful.

11 posts were merged into an existing topic: What apps do you need on Haiku?

haikuDepot and SoftwareUpdater need to be able to re-start downloads.

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