Oz Package Management

[Corona_B]

I've had my 5600 for a few years now, but just recently i decided to make the switch to OZ 3.5.2.  I read that the package manager is currently broken\buggy, and sure enough, most of the times i tried to use it, it ended up freezing up the zaurus.

So what is the normal way to get new packages into OZ?  are most people just downloading ipkg's and installing them via console?

Is getting the package manager fixed a priority?

I'd love to "get into" OZ but i'm having trouble since i can't tell what is supposed to work and what isnt.  I hate sounding like a n00b, i'm a programmer for a living, but OZ is seriously kicking my butt so far.

[drw]

I assume you are referring to the Opie Package Manager as opposed to the GPE one.

Generally, Opie's Package Manager (Opie PM) is stable as long as you limit the number of commands you execute.  Due to a memory leak in libipkg, which Opie PM uses, each command allocates an additional 1-2 Megs of RAM which is not freed until the program is exited.  Once your device's free memory has been used up, Opie PM will crash, which could cause problems if it was in the middle of doing something.

The maintainer of libipkg is aware of the issue, and newer versions of libipkg have improved the situation somewhat (newer version will be included in the next version of OZ).

I believe your device has 32 Meg of RAM, so with no other programs running, you can probably do about 4 installs/removals before you will need to close it down and restart it.  One thing I have done in the past is to have System Info running (using the 1st tab, 'Memory') at the same time so I can monitor the memory useage.

The other option is to use the command line utility, ipkg.  However, if installing apps to a SD/CF/MMC card, you will need to also run ipkg-link to set up the appropriate links.  Also, Opie will need to be restarted for any newly installed apps to appear in the Launcher.  Opie PM does these things automatically for you.

[Merardon]

Personally, I recommend the ipkg command line utility. It always works great for me, and I happen to love using the command line anyways.