Mend Packages

1 What mending does

Mending creates SoftwareCentral collections and deployments for a package or application that has none of its own. Nothing is mended automatically: you select the items and click Mend.

For each selected item the background job does the following, in order:

1. Folders: creates a folder named after the package in the device software folder of SoftwareCentral, and in the user software folder when user collections are made. If the name is taken, a number is added, such as (2). When collection folders are switched off in the settings, the root folder is used.
2. Device collections: creates an install collection and, unless the template uses implicit uninstall, an uninstall collection. Both are named after the package, with the install or uninstall suffix from the settings, and moved into the device folder. When SoftwareCentral is set to check for existing collections, a collection that already exists is reused rather than made again.
3. User collections: unless the template says No user collections, or user collections are switched off in the settings, creates a user install collection and a user uninstall collection in the user folder.
4. Deployments: for an application, creates the install and uninstall deployments to these collections with the settings of the chosen template (required or available, timing, user notifications and the other deployment settings). For a package, the same is done for each program, as the status message says.

2 The page at a glance

Open Settings › Mend Packages in the menu. The list shows every package and application at the site that does not have SoftwareCentral collections yet.

3 Mend status

Every item has one of these states. Only the two states that can be mended have an active check box; the others say what must be fixed first.

4 Filters, search and export

• Search: type part of a name or a package ID in the box on the left and press Enter. Each search value becomes a token.
• Filters: click Filters to open the panel. The number on the button shows how many filters are in use. Clear all filters resets them.

5 Select and mend

1. Choose the deployment settings on the right. Pick an application template in the list, or leave it on Default deployment settings to use the default template of the site. The template decides required or available, the timing and the user collections.
2. Select the items. Tick the rows you want, or tick the header box to select everything that matches the search and the filters and can be mended, on all pages. Rows that cannot be mended stay unticked.
3. Optional: click Select from CSV file to select a list. See below.
4. Check the count of selected items above the button, then click Mend selected. When more than 21 items are selected, SoftwareCentral first asks you to confirm, because it recommends mending about 20 at a time.
5. The Mend status window opens. It shows the item being mended, how long it has run and what is left. Closing the window reads the list again.

Select from CSV file

• The file has one package or application per line, given by its package ID or its name. A file exported from this page works, and so does a plain list of names.
• The delimiter is found by itself: semicolon, tab or comma. The file can be at most 2 MB.
• After the import a window says how many were selected, how many were already selected, which cannot be mended, and which were not found at this site. The list then shows only the selected items.

6 Fields and buttons

7 Best practices

8 Troubleshooting