Re: [MiNT] Re[2]: GEM boost

[Evan Langlois <Evan@CoolRunningConcepts.com>]

On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 21:01 +0200, Peter Slegg wrote:

> Usually I know what is going on ;-)  I tend to find myself looking
> for a config file or similar. With GEM it's easy because I know
> which folder to look in and the options are fairly limited so
> job done. When looking for a *nix file it could be in one of
> several folders and have a more obscure name.

That was my point .. and everyone else's was that if you are porting
Unix software, you'll need RPM or something to keep track of it - nature
of the beast.  I agree on both points.

> > Knowing how to use the "find" and "grep" commands helped me
> > out a lot. But as Evan says, there is no substitute for good
> > docs.
> 
> It's not always convenient to start up a bash shell to find a file
> that I am then going to have to find again on the desktop and edit.

And what stops you from being able to call your text editor from the
bash shell?   After all if it was in your PATH it would be simple, but
for GEM that would mean putting tons of folders in the path.  Suddenly
Unix makes sense - at least for the command line.  Desktop people want a
different sort of grouping.

This was why I said to make the RPM manager just be a folder that has
virtual folders inside for each installed package.  Inside each would
the files for that package, and performing file operations from the
desktop on those files would actually modify the installed files .. plus
right-click options to get diffs if the actual rpm was available, etc.
So, things get installed the Unix way, but you can see everything as if
it was in its own folder.  This would be great either integrated with
the desktop or as a program (whos icon would be the top packages folder)
as it could communicate all needed information with the desktop via
drag-n-drop.