TINAPAMA / 2025-08-14 22:31:51

1	Have you ever found yourselves installing the same program over and over again, on your different Amigas? You can now automate this process, even at distance, with TINAPAMA!

In a Nutshell

TINAPAMA (TINAPAMA is Not A PAckage MAnager) brings automated program installation on Classic Amigas. It supercedes AmiAutoUpdate, which had a different philosophy and was never completed. It differs from AmiUpdate on AmigaOS 4 and EasyInstall on MorphOS by providing a simple command line and decentralised program descriptions. TINAPAMA allows updating programs individually or in groups, physically or remotely .

Requirements

TINAPAMA has been tested on real Amigas and in WinUAE, with Kickstart v3.0, Kickstart v3.1, Workbench v3.1. It should work with Kickstart/Workbench 2.x and above.

You will also need a working TCP/IP stack, like Miami or Roadshow, AmiSSL library to access secured Web sites, and the XAD system to extract the files from the downloaded archives. Nothing else, as TINAPAMA is a Shell command.

Note: the XAD system and LHA v2.15 archives do not go well together, as noted elsewhere, spaces will be changed into underscore upon unarchiving! This change may or may not cause problem... Unfortunately, TINAPAMA cannot do anything about that! 

Availability

TINAPAMA is free and open source software. You can dowload below its latest version, which you can also find in Aminet (soon!). Its source code is available in the Europe-based CodeBerg .

I envision a time when all packages in Aminet would include version information in their READMEs, would "replace" older versions with newer ones (like AmiModRadio does) instead of creating new entries with version numbers in their names, and would include a TINAPAMA description file in their archives to ease updating! 

• 2025/08/14, v0.9: first public release of TINAPAMA. This release implements all the options that have been useful to update more than 80 programs on my A4000!

Usages

A typical use of TINAPAMA would be to execute the following command to update AmiModRadio to compare the local version of AmiModRadio with the one in Aminet and update it to the latest (if necessary).

1.C:> TINAPAMA Utilitaires:Musique/Divers/AmiModRadio/AmiModRadio.tinapama

TINAPAMA v0.8 (Aug 14 2025) © 2025-2026 Tygre

Using AmiModRadio.tinapama

Setting up logging:                   Ok
Setting up description file:          Ok
Setting up data file:                 Ok
Setting up local drawer:              Ok
Getting destination drawer:           Ok
Parsing version file address:         Ok
Parsing remote file address:          Ok
Getting remote file content type:     Ok
Getting remote file content drawer:   Ok
Getting remote version file:          Ok
Saving remote version file:           Ok
Getting files list:                   Ok
Getting remote version file type:     Ok
Getting archived version file:        Ok
Getting remote version file analysis: Ok
Parsing remote version file:          Ok
Getting local version:                Ok
Is local version up-to-date?          No
Getting remote file:                  Ok
Saving remote file:                   Ok
Getting files list:                   Ok
Copying remote files to local drawer: Ok
Running after-update script (if any): Ok
Updating local data to new version:   Ok

Updated Utilitaires:Musique/Divers/AmiModRadio/
with package mus/play/AmiModRadio.lha

Deleting (some) temporary files:      Ok
Good bye!

TINAPAMA v0.9 (Aug 14 2025) © 2025-2026 Tygre

Using AmiModRadio.tinapama

Setting up logging:                   Ok
Setting up description file:          Ok
Setting up data file:                 Ok
Setting up local drawer:              Ok
Getting destination drawer:           Ok
Parsing version file address:         Ok
Parsing remote file address:          Ok
Getting remote file content type:     Ok
Getting remote file content drawer:   Ok
Getting remote version file:          Ok
Saving remote version file:           Ok
Getting files list:                   Ok
Getting remote version file type:     Ok
Getting archived version file:        Ok
Getting remote version file analysis: Ok
Parsing remote version file:          Ok
Getting local version:                Ok
Is local version up-to-date?          Yes
Good bye!

TINAPAMA uses a description file to locate the remote version of a program and compare its version with the version in the local drawer. You can use ready-made descriptions files or create your own. The drawer being updated is the drawer in which the description file, typically ending with .tinapama (e.g., AmiModRadio.tinapama above), is located. In addition to any file updated by TINAPAMA, a new file called TINAPAMA.data will be created in the drawer to contain local version information.

So, to update AmiModRadio to its latest version in Aminet, using the description file below, you could issue the following command from anywhere:

1.C:> TINAPAMA Utilitaires:Musique/Divers/AmiModRadio/AmiModRadio.tinapama

and TINAPAMA would parse the description file AmiModRadio.tinapama, download, unarchive, and copy the new files into Utilitaires:Musique/Divers/AmiModRadio.

TINAPAMA works, of course , with Aminet packages: with or without the Version: field in their READMEs, with or without top drawers in their archives. It also works with packages in GitHub  and should work all the same with packages in BitBucket, CodeBerg, or SourceForge!

Description File Format

The table below describe the domain-specific language used to describe updates. All options and values are case insensitive, except for URLs: http://aminet.net/package/mus/play/AmiModRadio exists, http://aminet.net/package/mus/play/aMiMoDrAdIo doesn't!

Description File Format

Options	Examples	Values	Comments
remote_version_file_address	http://aminet.net/mus/play/AmiModRadio.readme	A URL with FTP, HTTP, or HTTPS scheme	Always mandatory, usually should point to a README file but can also point to an archive or executable
remote_version_file_type	FILE	FILE (default) or ARCHIVE	Always mandatory, tells if the version file should be unarchived
remote_version_file_archived_version_file	YACDP 1.2/YACDP	A path to a file within the archive	Mandatory with remove_version_file_type=ARCHIVE, tells which file, inside the archive, from which to get version information
remote_version_file_analysis	AMINETREADMEVERSION	AMINETREADMEVERSION (default), AMINETPACKAGEDATE, or AMIGADOSVERSION	Optional, tells how to get version information from the file/archive
remote_main_file_address	ftp://ftp.aminet.net/mus/play/AmiModRadio.lha	A URL with FTP, HTTP, or HTTPs scheme	Always mandatory, usually should point to an archive containing the files from which to update
ARCHIVE	ARCHIVE	ARCHIVE (default) or FILE	Always mandatory, tells if the remote file should be unarchived
remote_main_file_archived_content	INDRAWER	INDRAWER (default) or NODRAWER	Always mandatory, tells if the files from which to update are at the top-level of the archive or in some drawer(s)
remote_main_file_archived_content_drawer	YACDP 1.2/	A path to a drawer within the archive	Mandatory with remote_main_file_archived_content=INDRAWER, tells in which drawer of the archive to find the files/drawers with which to update
local_drawer_icon	OVERWRITE	KEEP (default) or OVERWRITE	Optional, tells if the icon of the drawer being updated should be kept "as is" (maybe a nice MagicWB icon? ) or overwritten (by some B&W v1.3 drawer icon? )
local_drawer_window	UPDATE	KEEP (default) or UPDATE	Optional, tells if the icon of the drawer being updated should have its properties updated: position, size, view mode... Useful with local_drawer_icon=KEEP to keep your nice icons by see the content of the drawer as intended
local_drawer_subdrawer	Prefs/	A path to a subdrawer of the local drawer in which to update the files	Optional, useful if multiple packages must be installed in the same drawer but would overwrite each other's files, like ABackup and Prefs/ABackup
local_drawer_script	Assign ReOrg: "" | Execute patch.exec	A set of AmigaDOS commands separated by |	Optional, useful if some post-processing is necessary after updating the files, like patching some files, extracting some archive within the archive, etc.
(local_drawer_content)	OVERWRITE	OVERWRITE (default) or PURGE	Optional, not yet implemented
(local_drawer_protected_files)	file1,file2,...	Some paths to local files	Optional, not yet implemented
(local_drawer_protected_dirs)	drawer1,drawer2,...	Some paths to local drawers	Optional, not yet implemented

Ready-made Description Files

In alphabetical order of the programs!

Roadmap

Some options are yet to be implemented:

• Purge of the destination drawer before copying new files
• Protection of some local files from behind overwritten.

Details

TINAPAMA is written in C with Cubic IDE and vbcc for the coding,  GadToolsBox for the GUI design, and SimpleCat for the internationalisation.

¹ Icon from Flaticon in Home Screen Apps pack, free for personal and commercial purpose with attribution.