Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems
Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems
Posted Sep 2, 2014 10:32 UTC (Tue) by clopez (guest, #66009)In reply to: Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems by NightMonkey
Parent article: Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems
My point here is that a developer that releases an App using an Ubuntu or Debian runtime can rely on other developers (or even the distribution) upgrading the runtime. He don't has to be the one that upgrades the runtime with security upgrades, he can "outsource" that job to the distribution or other developers.
However, for a developer using a Gentoo runtime, outsourcing that job is pretty much impossible. This is because Gentoo is both a rolling release (the package version numbers change constantly) and because each package can have very customized compilation flags or patches.
Everybody using the "Ubuntu X" runtime shares the same runtime, so outsourcing (or delegating) security upgrades to others becomes easier. However, each one of the Gentoo runtimes are different. No one is going to share a Gentoo runtime. So the responsibility of security upgrades on a Gentoo runtime falls only on the developer of the application using that runtime.
Posted Sep 2, 2014 14:34 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
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I can take a snapshot and then do an "emerge world" - great for keeping my system up-to-date, and makes a great development platform.
But any developer who develops for just the one distro - the one on his own system - is an idiot if he wants others to use it too. For testing purposes you really need to build it on a couple of distros. In my case, I'd build it on the latest SLES (provided it wasn't too long in the tooth).
Then the version that's released for general use is against some version of LTS. Those who want bleeding edge run the rolling release, those who want stable run it against an LTS.
Cheers,
Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems
Wol