Bitten by the Red Hat Perl bug (InfoWorld) [LWN.net]

Bitten by the Red Hat Perl bug (InfoWorld)

Posted Aug 29, 2008 15:28 UTC (Fri) by Sutoka (guest, #43890)
In reply to: Bitten by the Red Hat Perl bug (InfoWorld) by MattPerry
Parent article: Bitten by the Red Hat Perl bug (InfoWorld)

>Exactly. Ideally, distros shouldn't be shipping the software at
>all.

So we'd be abolishing Linux distros and relying on upstream to package their software against the magical combination of libraries on your system? Yeah, good luck with that happening.

>If the vendor packages it, and you have the vendor's
>repository in your software update list, then you can update
>that package (or not) independent of the distro's time line.

You'd need all the repositories for all of the dependencies. You'd also need the same repositories as upstream used, otherwise ABI incompatibilies might prevent it from working at all. You'd also have no way to be sure that your packages won't collide with each other, as theres no central authority making the packages to prevent that from happening.

Basically, it'd be an absolute nightmare.

>Modern linux distros assume that everyone wants to run the
>latest versions of software on their systems. For people
>such as myself who may want to run a mix of software versions
>there is no easy way to do so. No current Linux distros cater
>to my desktop needs.

Distros often include a backports repository for stuff like that. And just because the current distros don't fit *your* needs, doesn't mean they don't fit the needs of the most people as far as packaging is concerned.

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Bitten by the Red Hat Perl bug (InfoWorld)

Posted Aug 29, 2008 15:35 UTC (Fri) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link]

> So we'd be abolishing Linux distros and relying on upstream to package
> their software against the magical combination of libraries on your
> system? Yeah, good luck with that happening.

If a distro is LSB compliant and the package is built to work on LSB compliant system, then there won't be a problem.

> You'd need all the repositories for all of the dependencies. You'd also
> need the same repositories as upstream used, otherwise ABI
> incompatibilies might prevent it from working at all. You'd also have no
> way to be sure that your packages won't collide with each other, as
> theres no central authority making the packages to prevent that from
> happening.

Again, LSB compliance. The packages are built to a standard and the distros support this standard. This isn't rocket science.

> Distros often include a backports repository for stuff like that.

So I have to depend on the distro maintainers to support older versions? Are there backports of every package in the repository? Are the repositories in the sources list by default?

> And just because the current distros don't fit *your* needs, doesn't
> mean they don't fit the needs of the most people as far as packaging is
> concerned.

Just because they do fit your needs doesn't mean they fit the needs of most people as far as packaging is concerned.

Bitten by the Red Hat Perl bug (InfoWorld)

Posted Aug 29, 2008 21:11 UTC (Fri) by Sutoka (guest, #43890) [Link]

>If a distro is LSB compliant and the package is built
>to work on LSB compliant system, then there won't be a problem.

So now no software can have dependencies on software not included in the LSB? Or are all non-LSB dependencies going to have to be statically compiled in or shipped with the package in some way? Neither of those are a very nice solution... If you don't do either, you just push the problem up slightly higher.

>Just because they do fit your needs doesn't mean they fit
>the needs of most people as far as packaging is concerned.

Quite few people complain about the current system, and lots of people tout the current system as being one of Linux's big advantages. This is while lots of people complain about how it works on Windows, with most software not having any auto update mechanism, and the developers that do each have their own implementation (Windows Update vs Adobe Updater vs Steam vs Firefox's vs etc).