As YOU said… YOU were not here during the development so YOU need to look back a bit further.
And as I already mentioned many of these bugs or mailing list complaints were closed or just ignored by everyone developing packagefs… take your blinders off for a change.
Lets start with an easy one it original BeOS version of the bible reading app by Darkwyrm (which is open source) does not work in it’s original form and had to be repackaged and update dot work on Haiku as it is now, quite a lot of changes.
If you run it on Haiku without these changes it will open… but not actually work or be able to even install any documents. And there are quite a lot of applications just like this.
Old BeOS user here. Yes, in the times of Haikuware there was a lot of apps what use the following install method:
"Unzip at /boot"
because it copied system files and libs into hardcoded paths.
You had to cross your fingers hoping it don’t break any previous existing library and brick the entire system…
I just downloaded the old ScriptureGuide package (from here) and installed it. Indeed, the Manager tool did not work … so I started it in a terminal, and got this:
mv: target '0.8.0/' is not a directory
grep: input file ‘/boot/system/non-packaged/apps/ScriptureGuide’ is also the output
grep: 0.8.0/index.html: No such file or directory
grep: 0.8.0/packagelist.txt: No such file or directory
grep: input file ‘/boot/system/non-packaged/apps/ScriptureGuide’ is also the output
grep: 0.8.0/index.html: No such file or directory
grep: 0.8.0/packagesizes.txt: No such file or directory
It appears the directory the .pkg says to install to, ScriptureGuide 0.8.0, causes problems because it had a space in it. So how did this work on BeOS, then? It looks to me like a bug in the .pkg … or a bug in LegacyPackageInstaller. Nothing to do with packagefs, here.
Anyway, after I renamed the folder, it now downloads files successfully, but does not find anything to download. It looks like the format of those SWORD files changed since this version of ScriptureGuide was written. Perhaps that is why all those changes were needed? But that has nothing to do with packagefs.
So, as far as I can see, ScriptureGuide for BeOS being broken has little to do with packagefs.
Why keep being contrarian… it was distributed as a zip IIRC not a pkg… whoever put it in a pkg later on probably messed that up and it has nothing to do with the fact that I used it perfectly fine before.
People forget that alot of BeOS software was statically compiled or only linked against system libs and you just drop the contents were they need to be and were done… clearly not very modern but extremely simple. The problem with pacakgefs is attempting to do gymnastics to simulate that experience but failing in about a dozen ways.
There was some backlash and no one created even one bug report about any of these apps. So don’t blame the development team and don’t pretend apps were broken, the facts are really against you here.
You can still use BeOS apps pacjaged that way if you want. Why? BECAUSE THEY DON’T NEED TO TOUCH ANYTHING IN /boot/system LIKE ANY BEOS APP. So the packagefs is completely irrelevant. On the other hand it enables getting a lot more other apps.
Actually is my fault… 
this was my first package :). I am can undestand both sides “pro packagefs” and “con packagefs” . I had sone apps which dindt worked after the change… Didnt remebered which one. But they got fixed. Although i really dont like haikuporter… Feels way to linuxisch . I undestand the need of it 
. Actually the packagesystem brought me back (thats not a huge pro for packagefs 
) since i just wanted to package projectconceptor. Sadly i know that it cost alot good developer eg. I am not shure if bonefish stopped contributing becaus of the critisim wich went personal and not technical. The strict path layout is something i really really stared to love - you know where everything should go. It cost a little bit more time as dev to think about where to place things but in the end i love it 10 times more than linux or windows where i have to search throug different directories to find apps. I think there is a lot to improove but after all i really learnd to love it.
packagefs is not a prerequisite for a package management system… it just happens to be the one that the developers at the time (most of which are now inactive) chose to implement, to the detriment of all Haiku users.
Are you serious… perhaps you should chill, it is a fact that a lot of real working BeOS applications were completely broken by packagefs and a lot of people were put out by this… I mean it isn’t even up for debate its a matter of fact. packagefs changes alot more things than you imply.
I mostly agree, however strict package layout is a job for a package linter… not the OS itself.
Dude, the link I gave was literally to DarkWyrm’s own site on the Wayback Machine. It is a .pkg inside a .zip file. Do you have some other .zip that does not work?
So far, in this thread, you continue to claim that “tons” of applications were broken, but the one and only you have mentioned is not broken because of packagefs.
No, its a debate. You should prove your position by providing list of broken applications, links to discussions, mailing lists etc. You can’t say that it is obvious and every knows. Until you provide enough proves, there are no subject to discuss.
This is the exact BS that ran off half the old developers.
Anyway such “complaints” dont help making packagefs better or bring haiku forward.
From my point of view there could be some things wich could be improoved there to make it easier for user / devs
But these are minor things which could be fixed "easy… Except the last one 
.
Again without any proof. My experience with the “old developers” is that two of them wrote packagefs themselves, several of them are very much still around, and some who are not active I know for sure are the first to think packagefs shows that Haiku is still relevant and that our approach to write a complete OS indeed does work and is much better than what Linux can achieve. I don’t need much effort to back my claim here:
There are people who left for various reasons which are more or less vaguely related. For example, augiedoggie who previously did a lot of work on haikuporter, but didn’t appreciate the move to github from bitbucket which indeed was a bit grabbing the project from his hands at the time (but unrelated to packagefs on technical side). But I know no developer who left because “packagefs sucks and is a bad idea”. I don’t consider that possible given the a,ount of discssion there was in the team and in the community when designing it. The implementation is the work of two persons, but the design is the work of everyone who was there back then.
When it was originally voted on… my the entire community at large, I think it was portrayed that package mangement would be quick and not draw on into a nightmare that continues to this day…
packagefs as it is… is something that should have never made it past glass elevator… just like all the other ideas that break Haiku it some way.
In Windows Program Files and system32 folders are read-only for user software to protect from unintended changes, AppData should be used for writable content. This is similar to Haiku.
Bible-reading? On a computer? Why not just buy a bible?
Are there any USEFUL applications that won’t work, or are your other instances similarly odd? I personally can’t see any point in wasting valuable time on things that don’t serve any useful purpose.
Your argument isn’t far from arguing that there aren’t any useful applications on Haiku at all tread lightly.