Why FDPM? The goal of FDPM was to merge LSM-style package info with a zip file archive. If you installed packages via FDPM, your FreeDOS system would be able to keep better track of what software you've installed. Also, the big benefit to package tracking is dependencies ... we were hoping to add dependency checking, so you couldn't remove a package if it were a dependency for another package, thus breaking that other package. Using the same mechanism, you would be warned if you were trying to install a package that had a dependency, and the dependency hadn't been installed yet.

News

FDPM new maintainers!
Posted: 13 January 2003 (jhall1)

The new maintainers for FDPM are: Natalia Portillo, Wolf Bergenheim, and Eric Auer. I'll transfer the SF project ownership to them. All future inquiries about FDPM should go to Natalia, Wolf, or Eric. I'll update the Contact page, as well. The FDPM project was a lot of fun, and I'm glad that others are able to take the project to new places now that I am no longer able to work on it anymore. Have fun!

FDPM needs new maintainer
Posted: 4 January 2003 (jhall1)

You may have wondered why there haven't been any updates to FDPM in over two years. I've moved on to other things, and even the FreeDOS Install Program has changed hands. So, I'm not really involved in FDPM anymore, and we don't seem to have a maintainer for the project. However, I have just checked in some pascal code contributed by Dexter Magnific . If you are interesting in becoming the new maintainer for FDPM, please contact me.
Update: I've posted a description of the FDPM Maintainer job function.

Status(2) on FDPM changes
Posted: 22 December 2000 (jhall1)

Okay, here is where I am on FDPM. I had set out with a few goals to start contributing to FDPM: (1) Compile without warnings (it now compiles 99% without warnings, and the only remaining problem is one with db.h, but I'll have to hit that later) (2) Compile on Borland C (this has been done now with 0.7.3) (3) work on the db database to see why it isn't working properly, and (4) switch over to getopt to parse the command line. So my next step is to debug the database, and then I'll attack the Remove (uninstall) mode. But I don't expect to start until after Christmas, so I'll hit this next week!

FDPM 0.8 tagged in CVS
Posted: 20 December 2000 (jhall1)

The new command line parser has been added to FDPM. This will make the code much easier to maintain. I haven't deleted the old command line parsing code yet, but I will do so when we verify that the new code works fine if compiled on djgpp. The new UNIX-like command line method now brings the code to 0.8 version. The tag is VER_0_8.

FDPM gets a new command line
Posted: 20 December 2000 (jhall1)

I have started the push to drop the old method of parsing the command line, in favor of using a UNIX-like getopt method. CVS has been updated. Expect the code to be broken for a few days. It currently does not build because of some weirdness in the getopt.c file (the index function, specifically.) I'll fix that. Also, I have not re-implemented Query yet. Looks like Remove was never implemented, so we'll have to add that at some point. The biggest change is that the command line options have changed! You will want to look at the usage and help functions to see what is new. Or, run 'fdpm -h' for a list of the command line options.

Status on FDPM changes
Posted: 18 December 2000 (jhall1)

Okay, here is where I am on FDPM. I had set out with a few goals to start contributing to FDPM: (1) Compile without warnings (it now compiles 99% without warnings, and the only remaining problem is one with db.h, but I'll have to hit that later) (2) Compile on Borland C (this has been done now with 0.7.3) (3) work on the db database to see why it isn't working properly, and (4) switch over to getopt to parse the command line. So I'd say I'm halfway to meeting my initial goals on this one.

FDPM 0.7.3 has been tagged in CVS
Posted: 18 December 2000 (jhall1)

I have made several changes to fdpm over the last day, and I have tagged my changes in CVS as VER_0_7_3 (version 0.7.3). Note that the build process has changed (no longer use 'config') and the code should now compile under Borland C as well. The docs have been merged into a single HOWTO. This release may not build warning- or error-free yet. This is still an experimental stage.

FDPM 0.7.0 alpha release 2 available via CVS
Posted: 17 December 2000 (jhall1)

I have committed the contents of fdpm-a2 into CVS on SourgeForce! Let the development begin again on this project. Our first goals will be to get the code to compile without warnings, and then to make sure the code compiles under Borland C as well. We'll need to work on the database-end, and I am starting to think this program would be easier to maintain if we used getopt to parse the command line. -jh

FDPM 0.7.0 alpha release 2 available.
Posted: 8 August 2000

The second alpha version of FDPM is here. This version contains some cleanup of code and database support is added partially. The beta release is expected at the end of this week.
Filename of the distribution: fdpm-a2.zip

FDPM 0.7.0 alpha released.
Posted: 4 August 2000

The alpha version of FDPM is available. This release supports building packages, installing packages and querying packages. You can download it from the Download section. I removed the inifile library because it contains a bug preventing that it will be useful for FDPM. Initialization support will be added during a later phase of the development.

Alpha release delayed.
Posted: 18 July 2000

I hoped that I could release this week the alpha release of FDPM but because I'm installing Linux and configuring it for DOSEMU, so the release may take a little longer then expected. (Windows is not a good development platform, even for creating DOS programs.)

Pre-alpha version available.
Posted: 12 July 2000

The sources of the pre-alpha version are available in the download section. Currently, this release contains only a makefile for DJGPP. Also, this release is only capable of building packages and querying them. The next (alpha) release will be over 1 or 2 weeks if possible. Comments are welcome.

New home for FDPM, a new start

The development of FDPM has stopped for several months, but with moving to Sourceforge I hope that development can restart again and that FDPM will be able to become a good package manager for FreeDOS. The developers of FDPM welcome idea's, suggestions from everyone. You can find our email addresses at the Contact page.