Yes, I am aware of that, but the ‘installer’ approach has been a disaster, it was supposed to simplify storeman installation and has been anything but, you’re more likely to get a working storeman app just by installing rpm (if you choose wrong architecture you even get an error message instead of silent failing from the installer) than by going installer route, being open source doesn’t mean free from criticism, if the only way to install biggest non-jolla appstore on sfos promoted on that store is just broken, it deserves criticism
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Oh, I should have not peeked into this thread again.
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Positive things first: Thank you @JoshStrobl for your concise summary of what users may (or may not) expect from Open Source Software developed by volunteers. Apparently you phrased these points better than I did, as you seem to have gotten your message across; well, only partially for the specific target (audience), but I obviously failed completely, multiple times.
The only thing I may nitpickingly point out is that not SailfishOS proper “is by-and-large a community effort” but the SailfishOS software ecosystem, i.e. almost all the apps which make using SailfishOS fun. OTOH it is correct, that Jolla started to allow few, selected people to contribute to SailfishOS proper and to offer even less apps / user-facing software with the gaps being filled by community software (e.g.presage, MeeCast Eventview etc.). -
I have a big issue with misinformation and ill advice being spread in this forum in a way that sounds like authoritative statements, in general and even more so if it covers software I maintain. Because “it sticks”, i.e. other users read these statements, obey them and spread them further, which ultimately causes many to believe it is a specific piece of software being faulty (i.e., not the misinformation or ill advice, because they were explicitly told so and cannot tell the difference without some technical insight). All in all misinformation and ill advice generates more questions and support requests, which is nothing any developer or maintainer of software wants, and more frustrated users. Hence I try to rectify such statements as early as I see them.
Two of the most recent example are:
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the ‘installer’ approach […] was supposed to simplify storeman installation
No, it was created because OpenRepos technically does not allow for distributing a software release for different SailfishOS releases from a single repository.
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silent failing from the installer
Since I maintain the Storeman Installer and created the SailfishOS:Chum GUI Installer, they are quite verbose in their corresponding log-file and the
systemdjournal; the log-files are explicitly and comprehensively denoted (including their specific paths) in the documentation for each Installer.
I cannot help it, if very few people refuse to read any documentation, but then prefer to rant on and on despite lacking technical understanding, and spread ill advice and misinformation. I would expect that people who do not really comprehend something (be it technical or not) do not make public statements about that in an authoritative tone, and I know most refrain from doing so.
This episode confirms my assessment that people who do not have the motivation to file a proper bug report (i.e. including which software was used, its version, specific error messages and / or log-files, the SailfishOS release and device involved etc.) despite being explicitly invited to do so (in all READMEs I write), do not experience a serious issue (otherwise they would have sufficient motivation, wouldn’t they?). Hence this confirms that my decision to close the comment threads at OpenRepos was absolutely right and I should more eagerly avoid to reply to any context- and content-less “does not work” postings in this forum in the future.
P.S.: BTW, I created Storeman Installer 2.2.8, which contained a trivial bug caused by a typo, solely to alleviate the issues which arise when directly installing a Storeman RPM for anything but testing purposes (i.e. only temporally). Spreading this nonsense publicly causes a lot of work, and I still see no other strategy than to denote it as nonsense again and again, though I am afraid by the latest rant, its misinformation and wording (“is just broken”, which is simply not true) that this will be continued.
P.P.S.: Any advice how to handle this social issue better is very welcome, except for “let him have his way”, because then all this ill advice and misinformation stands without being debunked.
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That’s weird because people reported issues with it on 23 Oct already:
2.2.6 was the most recent version at the time