Re: status of Progeny projects
On Tuesday, Nov 11, 2003, at 23:39 America/Denver, Peter Zoeller wrote:
Most software installs fail as a result of missing libraries. I would
like to see a central repository for all libraries, old, new and
development. A repository that when a library dependancy needs to be
satisfied, the installer be it RPM, APT or anyone elses, can
automatically access and download the appropriate version of library
required. This repository should only hold nothing but libraries, no
software, no packages, just libraries with a searchable capability
that one could also manually search and download ones needs.
Just curious... have you ever actually used Debian? When you write to
a list comprised of Debian developers that concentrates on Debian
software and library packaging needs to suggest something we've been
doing that for years now, I have to wonder why. If you want to install
software from Debian, all of our package installation methods
automatically install all the libraries (and, optionally, any other
recommended or suggested software) required for full operation. That's
what we do.
I'm not sure of the point of your suggestion-- having used more Red Hat
systems in the past year than bears thinking about, I can see how you
might think it useful for them, but even in that case, you have
different libc versions, compiler revs, architectures and sometimes
even kernels to keep track of, not to mention the version numbers of
the libraries. The only sensible solution is to package libraries as
part of a distribution, in which case I fail to see the utility of your
idea.
With the version numbers used in linux there is no fear as there is in
the other OS of overlaying and existing library that would result in
the breaking of other software. It would be no problem to run the
same library beside its earlier parent satisfying the need of all
software.
Unless the new library was binary-incompatible with the old, requiring
new revs of all the programs it uses. And then maybe the new library
calls executables that don't exist, requiring you to install new
software packages to handle that. At this point, it sounds like we're
back to packaging libraries as part of a complete distribution, in
which case I'm afraid your 'library-only' archive will not be of much
use.
Along with this there should be a tool that will allow the cleaning up
of ones libraries based on lack of activity so that the directories
holding libraries such as /lib can be safely maintained and kept from
growing out of hand.
Hrm. Sounds a lot like dpkg, combined with deborphan.
Thanks to all open source developers for the work that has and
continues to be done.
You're welcome. :)
-=Eric
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