Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration [LWN.net]

Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration

Posted Jan 26, 2011 13:02 UTC (Wed) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
In reply to: Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration by dgm
Parent article: Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration

I think the real problem is that the app developers know the dependencies but have no way of ensuring that they're installed. Even if you know the package name in a particular distribution, there's no guarantee the version you want even exists there (see endless versions of libssl for example).

Binary compatibility is really hard and most people don't bother. About the only library I know that pays any attention to it glibc, which goes to great lengths to ensure you get the symbol you linked against rather than whatever version is newest. Most libraries just increase the version number and ship it.

Many of the problems are solved. For example, we all more or less agree on the FHS so files end up in more or less the same place. LSB was in principle a great idea, but obsolete before it was done. What you need is something moves much faster.

Lets suppose that a few of the faster distributions (e.g. Mandriva, Ubuntu & Fedora) got together once a year and drew up a list of the 50 most common libraries and agreed on versions they would ship. Each distribution would be free to provide other versions, as long as that particular version would also ship. This might help (or not :) ).

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Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaboration

Posted Jan 26, 2011 14:27 UTC (Wed) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

This is the old "we need a common platform" argument and whether it's true or not doesn't seem to be important because we don't seem any closer, today, to actually doing it than we were ten years ago. I don't know that you can get cats to march in a line that straight and I think other solutions should be explored instead.

Creating platforms is a problem that has been up to now in the domain of the distribution. Most non-enterprise distributions don't actually worry about it at all, much less do it (except by chance). To have a third party dictate (or suggest) a platform to distributions is hard because (a) the distributions don't know what a platform is and (b) they won't like dancing to someone else's tune, especially if the advertised payoff is "More work for you but less work for people who are not you."