In the process of developing InstallerApp, which we told you about not too long ago, RipDev was investigating the technology behind Cydia. Basically, Cydia is a front-end to two open source techs – APT and DPKG. DPKG is a system that installs and removes specially prepared packages. APT allows these files to be organized in network repositories to be indexed and downloaded.

From RipDev:

Due to the highly unoptimal build of DPKG (as Jay Freeman, the author of Cydia, admits it in his article about Cydia) we had to compile DPKG and the tools needed from scratch. As a result, the same set of tools take only a little over than 1 megabyte as opposed to 32 installed by Cydia.
While testing Cydia support for InstallerApp, we of course had to use Jay’s creation a lot. And unfortunately it felt slow, and overloaded. We thought, well, why not make our own front-end to DPKG? It would be compatible with Cydia, but be focused on speed, elegance and be very, very thin. So one of our programmers sat down and made up in a week a new alternative installer that we are proud to reveal to you today, named Icy.

RipDev claims Icy is simple and they plan to keep it that way.

• It will only refresh repositories when you tell it to
• will not scroll pages of cool looking terminal text when installing or removing a package. Instead, it presents the installation process in a friendly and cool manner
• enhanced with crisp black and white interface featuring icons by quite famous artist Max Rudberg

Icy uses the same DPKG technology that Cydia uses but without the APT tech that handles the downloading of repository indeces and packages. Instead, RipDev decided to use a combination of libcurland sqlite for that.
Hungry for faster repository refreshes? Well, Icy will only download headers when refreshing repos so it won’t download again the indeces that were not changed – this saves on your traffic and makes the refreshes faster. It will pick up existing Cydia repositories and also will allow you to add more through its Add Source interface.

RipDev also added landscape support, awesome! I tip my hat at RipDev for adding landscape seeing as it’s so useful!
For those who are freaked out thinking you’ll have to take out your wallet for this, calm down, Icy will always remain free!

RipDev also mentions Installer 5 will be announced soon

-Click More to see Images of Icy-
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