Re: support for older distributions
On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 06:36:30PM +1000, Brian May wrote:
> >>>>> "Craig" == Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> writes:
>
> Craig> why is application bar any *more* reliable or trustworthy
> Craig> just because it is compiled against an old version of libc6
> Craig> in potato?
>
> It is not so much the new application I was thinking of, but all the
> old stable applications that already exist on the system.
>
> So recompiling foo for stable might produce a broken version of foo.
> fine. Downgrade or remove the package again. Problem solved. Nothing
> lost in the process, except time taken to down load, recompile and
> test the package.
>
> But installing a new version of libc6 on a stable system has the
> potential for breaking the whole system.
ok, i see your point but don't think that libc6 is that much of a
special case - any package has the potential to break the whole system.
admittedly, some (libc6, ldso, bash, etc) more than others...but the
potential is still there.
IMO & IME the biggest risk to a system running unstable is not so much
bugs in libc6 or whatever, it's 1. bugs in package pre,post scripts: a
simple typing error like "rm -rf / var/spool/foo" can wipe out a system
(not that i've seen this one - i'm just aware of the possibility...so
i upgrade non-vital systems first); and 2. faulty depends/conflicts or
version mismatch (e.g. apache modules needing to be recompiled for major
releases of apache)
it gets even more interesting when you want an upgraded version of some
application which depends on a newer version of some library which, in
turn, depends on a whole bunch of other stuff including a newer libc6.
what do you do then? do you recompile the whole dependancy chain (incl.
libc6) for potato or do you say "bugger it, it's less hassle and less
risk to upgrade to unstable"?
at what point does recompiling for stable stop being a convenience for
potato users and start being being a dead-end duplication of unstable?
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
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