Proposal to install Homebrew apps on /media/internal (USB partition)

--Xorg 18:07, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to propose that Homebrew apps be installed in...

/media/internal/homebrewapps (or other appropriate dir name)

PreWare and other installers would need to setup /etc/palm/luna.conf to point to the app path.

Proposal

1) PreWare checks on each startup in..

/etc/palm/luna.conf

and checks that ...


 * /media/internal/homebrewapps

...is added to the end of ApplicationPath. If not, append it.

2) Promote to developers who are not concerned about exposed code to use that path as the home for their apps. It may not work for apps that may be running while USB drive is externally mounted.

3) Future PreWare version could have option to move homebrew apps from /var/usr/palm to /media/internal/homebrewapps. This would be similar to ZLauncher allowing to 'move' PalmOS apps to SD card.

Benefits

- Avoids filling up the root/linux filesystems, which is bound to occur when homebrew hits thousands of apps or with other apps that include large data or metadata.

- More transparent to end users than other methods proposed.

Risks/Issues/Dependencies

- Source is exposed to anyone, including non-power users, when mounting the USB drive. (See PreCentral thread for optional workaround).

- PreWare or other homebrew installer apps would need to check on every startup that AppPath is correct, update if not.

Discuss

Discuss here or on PreCentral...

Posted by vreihen on PreCentral....

Two issues that I see off the top of my head:

1) /media/internal is a FAT file system, and doesn't support silly things like the Unix/Linux execute permission bit on files. Not the end of the world for most WebOS apps based on JavaScript, but fatal to any one that includes shell scripts or binary executables.

2) The kernel automagically unmounts /media/internal whenever you plug in a USB cable and choose to sync music or files. Any app installed on /media/internal would have it's files disappear (from the phone's perspective) whenever a USB transfer/sync was being done, which is probably not desirable.

If you browse around webos-internals, I seem to recall an old discussion about putting a loopback filesystem (virtual disk) onto /media/internal, and it was ultimately discouraged due to problem #2.

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