Re: About the recent DD retirements

[Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no>]

]] Keith Packard

> Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no> writes:
> 
> > This means that if you use system packages and want to have two
> > applications that both want foo.jar installed, but different versions
> > (since they need different APIs or different bug compatibility), we
> > don't support that well.  For C libraries, there are sonames and all,
> > but those largely doesn't exist for other languages and fixing that
> > would be a huge undertaking with, IMO, pretty poor prospects for
> > success.
> 
> For Java, I'm afraid I've taken to embedding the ABI version in the
> filename. The alternative is to completely disallow simultaneous
> installs of different versions, which seems worse.

That requires tracking ABI versions.  People often don't do that.  They
(effectively) statically link and then just test the resulting binary
and distribute that, including all dependencies.

There are certainly downsides to this approach, but it's what lots of
the world seems to have fallen down on.

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are