I put up a beta repository a month ago with the intent to have it host unstable packages for hacker level users that wanted to take an extra risk and were both willing and able to provide syslogs for debugging problems. This actually worked well for the BossPaper initial release.

It turns out that many users that did not fit the above description installed this repository anyway. In addition, all sources packages included it. Those “all sources” packages are dangerous and no one should ever install them.

The result of all this is that a bunch of end users have installed my latest beta updates intended for beta testers only. Due to that, I now have had Saurik release an update of the bigboss repository that conflicts with the beta repository. This will uninstall the beta repository from everyone when they upgrade the main source.

I will be posting the beta repository URL for users to manually type in for each beta test in the future and I will expect only users capable fo debugging problems (without complaining mind you) will install it.

Final Update: You can get v2.0.1 here.

Edit 2: Thanks to syslog provided by Cory Lustic and Rob Kreger, I have a fix for the springboard reload problem. Working on slow spotlight now. Should hopefully be all updated within the hour.

Edit: I am quite disappointed. This is crashing for a lot of you but not one person has offered a syslog output that can help me solve the problem. Not even one person says what firmware they are on or provides any data other than “it doesn’t work” that can be used to help solve this problem. This is in the beta repository. No one should be using that if they are not going to provide syslog output. No one should be using it if they are not familiar with SSH and know how to solve problems. Did this get tested well before posting ? No, of course not thats what the purpose of the beta repository is. It works fine for me on all 5 of my devices. With no additional information how is it ever going to be fixed?

Now because there are so many people that did not follow instructions and installed the beta repository but are incapable of using SSH or doing their part as beta testers, I am going to have to move the beta repository to a new location that requires users to type it in :(

Resolving this matter is relatively simple. Uninstall the beta repository, uninstall libhide and let it remove anything that it wants to remove. Exit Cydia and reload cydia. Refresh sources and reinstall whatever was uninstalled. It will use the old libhide and you won’t have any problems – as long as the beta repository is not present.

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I have rewritten LibHide and released an update to poof, categories for it. SBSettings and BossPrefs will use it instantly as soon as you install the updated libhide. Why do you care about this? Read on, I will try to be brief.

LibHide is the underlying library that lets you hide icons. SBSettings and BossPrefs use it. It works by modifying system files. In most cases, it uses restrictions to hide your application. The restrictions are backed up by iTunes and if you restore your iPhone and then restore the backup, the hidden icons are hidden still. The biggest issue with this method is that users often will hide apps and then restore the iPhone later and find that the icons are still hidden. I actually get multiple email messages a day from users that have had categories folders created, restored, then found all their icons are missing. They’re just hidden and the iTunes restoration of your backup caused it. Anyways, read on.

An alternative method to this is to use a key in the Info.plist that resides with each application. The downside here is that each time you update an app, the icon is unhidden. Not so great either.

I have managed to solve this all, I think. I have moved hiding of icons into a mobile substrate addon. That means no system files are modified. If you restore, you are back to unhidden icons as you would expect. Also, the added benefit is if you are in mobile substrate safe mode, the icons are back. This may be useful for getting to your apps in an emergency.

BossPrefs and SBSettings already used libhide so updating libhide means that the new method of icon hiding takes effect instantly. Categories and Poof, however, did not. These have been rewritten to use libhide.

Libhide is a library and is available for any developer that wants to write an app that needs to hide icon(s). You can view the example source code in /usr/lib folder after installing the library.

Finally, as a normal user, you normally don’t have to install libhide. It is installed automatically for you. In this case, libhide is an update so you should update it.

I have put it in the beta repository along with categories and poof updates. Please give me any feedback if there are specific problems. If not, I’ll move it to the “real” repository in a day or so.

For some reason, all the sudden, I have had a lot of email support questions on problem installing several packages on Icy. If you have jailbroken and installed only Icy, you need to search for “pwnage” in Icy, and install the Icy Pwnage Bundle Fix. This will solve many install issues. Very important, those of [...]