Towards an open, interoperable homebrew ecosystem

[rwhitby]

Over the last few weeks, I have been on a crusade to create an open, interoperable homebrew ecosystem, where authors upload an application to a site of their choice, and users can use *any* application installer to access homebrew applications from *all* such sites.

I'm now pleased to announce that the two leading sites containing collections of homebrew applications have publicly stated their intention to support such an open, interoperable homebew ecosystem:

http://forums.precentral.net/homebre...ml#post1806382

http://forums.precentral.net/homebre...ml#post1807081

I want to publicly thank these sites for agreeing to create the best solution for the homebrew application developers and all Pre homebrew users.

I'm hoping to get a similar public pledge from PreGame for the fileCoaster application. I believe the second post above covers the PreLoad installer applications. I also hope to get a public pledge from the WebOS Quick Install author.

Once we have those, then I think this effort to create an open, interoperable ecosystem of normal homebrew webOS applications will be self-sustaining, and then we can focus on how to make the installation of homebrew modifications, services and plugins that require commands to be run as root on the Pre to be just as easy as the installation of normal webOS applications, without opening up any security holes in the process.

The WebOS Internals development group maintains an example of the standard ipkg feed format at htp://ipkg.preware.org/feeds/preware/all/ and is willing to help any developers of application repository sites or application installers to support that standard ipkg feed format.

-- Rod

[rwhitby]

I'm pleased to point to the announcement that the PreLoad installer application now supports the open standard ipkg feed format:

http://forums.precentral.net/homebre...ml#post1823955

We're still waiting on a public response from the author of fileCoaster ...

-- Rod

[rwhitby]

I'm pleased to (belatedly) announce that WebOS Quick Install (as of version 2.0) also supports the open standard ipkg feed format:

http://forums.precentral.net/homebre...k-install.html

WebOS Quick Install contains techniques developed by the WebOS Internals team to allow installation of advanced homebrew applications that require commands to be run as root during installation, without the user needing to access Linux or the command line.

-- Rod

[rwhitby]

Canuck Software is the latest participant in the open, interoperable homebrew ecosystem. All the advanced homebrew installer packages that Jason is writing are now available in the canuck-software feed at http://ipkg.preware.org/feeds and are therefore installable by both WebOS Quick Installer and Preware (and any other installers that subscribe to the open standard preware.org feeds).

-- Rod

[rwhitby]

The Preware advanced homebrew installer application has now gone into beta status. Preware uses the open, interoperable homebrew ecosystem described in this thread.

The Preware application homepage is at Application:Preware - WebOS Internals

There is a PreCentral forum for the Preware application at http://forums.precentral.net/homebre...0-preware.html

Please direct any support questions to the PreCentral forum, or the #webos-internals IRC channel.

Thanks to all the WebOS Internals developers involved in turning this concept into reality!

-- Rod