Applications and bundled libraries

Posted Mar 19, 2010 18:16 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
In reply to: Applications and bundled libraries by Frej
Parent article: Applications and bundled libraries

I'm sorry, but "stable distro" and "latest versions of A, B, C" just don't jibe.

Whenever I really needed installing non-official software like that, after much looking around I usually decided not to do it. And when I did, the "application A" for which I truly, really, no-other-option-works, had to get a later version it was something very localized (not exactly (pieces off) newest Gnome or KDE), and I installed that from source (and created a package for simple installation/update). The "dependency hell problems" mentioned mostly just weren't.

Where I did install a larger set of stuff was when we had Suns with Solaris, where many pieces were almost useless (like the infamous cc or its klunky sh, or its bloated beyond recognition version of X) . There the first step was what somebody called GNU > /usr/local (which did include X Windows, TeX and an assortment of other pieces). But it was still done carefully and as limited as reasonable.

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Applications and bundled libraries

Posted Mar 21, 2010 0:13 UTC (Sun) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link]

>I'm sorry, but "stable distro" and "latest versions of A, B, C" just don't jibe.

That is because in your mindset every application is inextricably part of The System. That isn't the way anyone thinks outside of the Linux ecosystem, and it's frustratingly difficult for one side to understand the other.

The average user wants to continue with the same stable system (with the appropriate fixes if they're towards the higher end of the average), but with the option of whatever software versions they choose. A Windows user doesn't expect that updating Firefox may require them to reinstall every other application on their system to support a complex web of interdependencies - the idea would be beyond ludicrous. This highly desirable goal is currently achieved by bundling libraries - perhaps it always will be.

It doesn't have to be that way, but the [overly IMO] rapid pace of Linux distribution releases means that having separate system and applications package trees would rapidly lead to massive combinatorial explosion.