Re: What do you wish for in an package manager?

[Arthur Korn <arthur@korn.ch>]

Hi

Mark Seaborn schrieb:
> I want a system where I can install multiple versions of a library (or
> any package really) and say which version I want each program on the
> system to use, possibly on a per-user basis.  The present system is a
> disaster waiting to happen:  If I install a package from unstable, it
> often wants to replace my version of libc from stable with one from
> unstable.
[...]

You actually can install (hypotetical) libfoo0
(/usr/lib/libfoo.so.0.3.1) and libfoo1
(/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1.0.9) at once, and that's why Debians
shared library dependencies work (with packages gradually
upgrading to the new library). Unfortunately more and more
library packages do no more properly feature the entire soname
in the package name, which can cause mayham.

And if you want to install packages from unstable on a stable
system you ether take the binary package and everything it
depends on, or you apt-get -b source it. If all library packages
are made properly, you can't get around this with fancy package
management.

Running programs with another than the standard version of a
library can be done with LD_PRELOAD (ld.so(8)).

ciao, 2ri