Re: Using python + pygtk in Desktop modules (was Re: Revisitingthe Gnome Bindings)

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 15:18 +0100, Andrew Sobala wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 09:42 -0400, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > No packaging system that I am aware of handles situations like Python's
> > (or the kernels, or GStreamer's, or any other framework's) either.
> > Namely, say you have the framework package of a particular version
> > installed; python-2.3.  And then you have a versioned library installed
> > for this framework; say, pygtk-2.3-2.4.  (pygtk 2.4 for python 2.3)  Now
> > an upgrade of python comes along to 2.4.  The system should see that to
> > install python 2.4, you need the matching pygtk-2.4-2.4 package in order
> > to make sure all apps keep working.  No packaging system can do this,
> > however.
> 
> I don't quite understand why this would be a problem.
> 
> If a version of an operating system is released with python-2.3, the
> pygtk-2.4 package should install its files into the python-2.3 versioned
> module directory.
> 
> When a new version is released with python-2.4, the *new* pygtk-2.4
> package distributed with *this* version of the operating system would be
> compiled against python-2.4 and install its files into the python-2.4
> versioned module directory.
> 
> Is this not how it works at the moment? If not, why not?

When all of your libraries are distributed by the OS vendor, sure.

Say though that you have a third-party app written for pygtk which
includes its own libraries that are installed solely for python 2.3.
When python 2.4 comes along, that app *must* continue using 2.3.  Which
means the app must be hard coded to only invoke the python 2.3 binary.
Which is distribution specific.  Which forces app authors to release
updated packages for their apps for newer distributions.  Which
effectively kills any purpose of having ABI stability.  And, finally,
which forces the management, selection, installation, and upgrading of
installed packages onto the user.

You can't just click, install, and have the thing work 5+ years down the
road if you ever need to upgrade your OS.  Which is often necessary, for
various reasons, including hardware upgrades, security patches, and so
on.

> 
> Thanks,
> --
> Andrew
> 
> 
> 
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.