Re: spatial stuff detail

[Guido Schimmels <guido schimmels freenet de>]

Am 23.09.2003 20:55:58 schrieb(en) George:
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 07:15:13PM +0200, Guido Schimmels wrote:
> > Then you have 3 incompatible versions in /usr/lib, used by one
> > application each. Why not keeping it together with the apps then?
> > That's my point all long. What's the point of shared resources  
> which
>
> > don't get shared?
> > But as Debian packagers think duplicate libraries are evil, they
> will
> > repackage such that your little security update will end up 50M  
> big.
>
> And how would it not be 50M if you had to update all the apps because
> they
> used static libs?

Because those 50M is not the download size of the fixed apps, but  
results from the chain reaction triggered by the uncounted cross- 
dependencies of Debian's messed up dependency graph. That is one of the  
reasons for the increasing popularity of source based distros. Of  
course source based distros are like waving the white flag and admit  
that Linux is doomed a geek toy.


> As far as I remember this similar practice led to incredibly broken  
> MS
> shared
> libs because everybody depended on a different broken version.  There
> was no
> need to keep binary compat because everybody would package their own
> version.

If you are talking about MS system DLLs your are still missing my  
point. Do I really have to remind you again that I'm talking about  
libraries which are in use by not more than a single application or  
maybe 2 or 3. The application developer is in a much better position to  
test his application against a new library release. For any moderately  
complex application it would take an external packager __days__ to make  
sure upgrading a library doesn't break it if only in the most subtle  
ways. What when Linux has 10000 applications? How is a distributor  
going to pull this off?

What if my distributor doesn't bother to package a number of apps after  
which I lust?  With every 3rd-party package, which messes with my  
system libraries, I risk to hose my box. With self-contained appdirs  
there is no such risc. Maybe some of them don't work properly. But you  
don't give a stranger a shot to flush your installation down the drain.


> Shared libs that are actually shared among apps and get updated
> independently, tend to have higher quality in my experience.  As a
> linux
> example, look at the quality of libs that are usually installed as
> static
> only libs.  They're usually very horrible.  ABI/API problems are
> quickly
> discovered if you have more users using different versions of the
> library.

I rather have the application developer select a library which doesn't  
break his application than waste my time with sending bug-reports.  
There are people who don't see computers as a means by its own. You  
know there is a reason why MacOS X is so popular with the alpha-geeks  
(as Tim O'Reilly calls them). Even geeks get tired of spending so much  
time with fixing other people's broken code. Helping to improve a few  
apps can still be fun. Being forced to debug every library and  
application on your disk is something very few people are willing to do  
for an extended period.