Poettering: Revisiting the fragmentation

Posted Sep 3, 2014 22:31 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Poettering: Revisiting the fragmentation by oldtomas
Parent article: Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems

I still cling to the old dream that an app has the responsibility of working with a whole range of environments (file system layout, minor variances in lib versions, etc.)

It would be nice... but in practice this means an exponential explosion of test environments, and what it really means is that your personal environment has never been tested by anyone but you, ever. Which means you get your own personal bugs. Now, I like this -- it means I get to help fix those bugs, and improve the quality of the software for everyone -- but for end users? Not so good.

Poettering: Revisiting the fragmentation

Posted Sep 4, 2014 7:04 UTC (Thu) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link] (3 responses)

> but in practice this means an exponential explosion of test environments [...]

I think this is a very valid concern. Still, I think it's worth to take a step back and look at it from some distance: Tests, after all, are just a last line of defense. To keep software correct (or "as correct as possible"), we need first and foremost good interfaces. Meaning simple, understandable, well-designed. Small is paramount here -- you can't fulfill a contract you don't understand (and bad examples abound!).

By all means, test -- but first you gotta get a feeling that your software is doing the right thing.

Poettering: Revisiting the fragmentation

Posted Sep 4, 2014 14:15 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Agreed -- but given how hard it is to design good interfaces (much harder than writing the actual software, IMNSHO) and how often they churn... do you think we're anywhere near your utopia yet? Not really...

Poettering: Revisiting the fragmentation

Posted Sep 5, 2014 6:35 UTC (Fri) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link] (1 responses)

> do you think we're anywhere near your utopia yet? Not really...

Strongly agree: not yet, and by a far stretch.

But utopia is a place to "move towards" and not to "be in", anyway. So watch me making uncomfortable noises whenever I think the direction is wrong.

And yes, designing a good interface is definitely the hard part. But it's rewarding. And we as a profession should insist on getting that reward :-)

Poettering: Revisiting the fragmentation

Posted Sep 5, 2014 16:17 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

It's hard to insist on anything when there is no barrier to entry for writing library code, anyone can write what they want, and anyone can use it regardless of its ABI discipline, if enough people use it then there is a lot of pressure to package it up for the major distros and the distros have shown a limited amount of pushback for enforcing quality standards on upstreams.