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Fedora opens up to bundling

Fedora opens up to bundling

Posted Oct 14, 2015 14:39 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: Fedora opens up to bundling by raven667
Parent article: Fedora opens up to bundling

> When the OS distributor can provide a standard, versioned ABI which applications can rely on for the libraries they use then maybe the amount of bundling will go down.

The OS distributor CANNOT do this because it's not up to the OS distributor to write and maintain those libraries. If any solution to 'bundling problems' is 'all libraries must be XXX by distribution' then it's a non-solution. It is simply something that will never happen because it's not something that Linux distributions can do anything about. It is, very simply, beyond their control.

Whether or not it's in the interests of libraries to provide a 'stable API/ABI' is up to that library author. They have their own timelines, own purposes, own goals, and sometimes having this magical 'versioned ABI' may be what they want, and other times it isn't.

Unless distributions can come up with a solution that realistically acknowledges that it is detrimental to many application developers and users to try shoehorn all possible libraries and applications into timetable and release policies that are convenient for distributions... then application developers and users will simply treat any effort to 'debundle apps' as the anti-feature it is and work around it accordingly.

The more difficult distributions make to distribute software that doesn't adhere to restrictive unrealistic policies the worse the distribution is.


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Fedora opens up to bundling

Posted Oct 14, 2015 16:31 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (4 responses)

> The more difficult distributions make to distribute software that doesn't adhere to restrictive unrealistic policies the worse the distribution is.

I think we are in agreement, it would be great if the distros would stop pretending that they are capable of packaging the world and would agree on a subset of software that app developers could rely on to be maintained with compatibility across systems.

Fedora opens up to bundling

Posted Oct 14, 2015 17:54 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes!

Follow the TCP/Network-style layered model (which is unix derived anyways) and apply it to the distribution design.

Something like this:

Layer 1 = Hardware

Layer 2 = Kernel

Layer 3 = Linux Plumbing: (Systemd, kernel modules, dbus, etc.)

Layer 4 = Linux Distribution: Core libraries, userland drivers, 'most stable' libraries, OS daemons, and low level dependencies and software management facilities.

Layer 5 = User sessions: Desktop environment for desktops or whatever system people are using to manage their servers.. openstack, puppet, docker, fleet, chef, etc.

Layer 5.5 = Applications and/or servers. Sandboxed or containers or whatever system people are using to manage their software installs.

That seems like the way to go from what I can tell. Layers should been relatively isolated from each other to try to avoid leaking dependencies and to make it simpler to implement a more universal distro-agnostic way to manage everything.

Fedora opens up to bundling

Posted Oct 14, 2015 18:05 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

Fedora opens up to bundling

Posted Oct 14, 2015 20:07 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Yes. I have been playing around with things like Fedora Atomic to see where they are taking things. It's a interesting approach.

Fedora opens up to bundling

Posted Oct 14, 2015 18:29 UTC (Wed) by JFlorian (guest, #49650) [Link]

I think this or something very much like it must happen eventually. The pain of not doing so will eventually make us realize the pain of doing so is the lesser evil. Look at the building codes for homes with so much overkill everywhere you look, yet you don't need to rebuild your house simply because you want to install a heavy granite counter-top or live in 70s style with a water-bed.


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