Some pre-release notes for Woof alpha3

Mode 12
The question has been asked a few times about some Flash drives coming up in PUPMODE 12. I have not yet tackled that -- targeting that one for alpha4.

BootFlash
Only test on Flash drives, not on USB hard drives.

Package Manager
On my todo list still, with the Ubuntu/Debian builds some unexpected packages come up as dependencies. For example, I chose to install OpenOffice Writer and 'pkg-config' was listed as a dependency --which is mighty odd, as pkg-config is only needed when compiling source packages (as far as I know) -- so deselected it and OpenOffice worked fine. So, I need to create a list of "doubtful packages", that by default will be unticked.

Again for Ubuntu/Debian and the OpenOffice Writer example, it worked after installation, but did not have the GTK user interface. As per their usual habit, the Ubuntu/Debian people have split OpenOffice into several packages, and the GTK user-interface component is a separate package -- I installed that, and Writer came up with the GTK UI. So, there needs to be some kind of "suggestion list" -- if you install OO then you should also install the GTK component. This is also on the to-do list.

Would it be helpful to see a graphical or tree-view showing the what dependencies belong to which packages? I could add that, seems like a good idea. So, when previewing OpenOffice or example, apart from the list of dependencies, there could be a button to show the dependencies hierarchy. Again, this would be for alpha4.

Intrepid Puppy
Alpha3 "Intrepid Puppy" (Ubuntu) build has the 2.6.29-rc7 kernel. Just something new to play with. Also Unionfs, not Aufs. Apart from Unionfs, I have not compiled any third-party modules, so ndiswrapper is missing.

TEA
TEA text editor instead of Geany, has syntax highlighting for Genie. The Vala compiler and Vala IDE are in the devx sfs file. TEA seems good, and small -- if anyone would like to take it on to hack the source so that functionality and menus match Puppy (as mentioned in my last post), go for it!

Tags: woof