General dependencies discussion (was: ARTICLE - ESR gives up on Fedora)

[Ben Scott]

On 2/26/07, Bayard Coolidge <n1ho at yahoo.com> wrote:
> What I was referring to was the quagmire of interdependencies in some
> packages that make it difficult/impractical to update to new versions
> conveniently.

  That is another aspect to this disgusting mess.

  I tried building GNOME from source once, desiring that the new stuff
be separate from the distribution-provided stuff.  Everything depended
on everything else.  A would complain it needed B built first; B would
complain it needed A.  I eventually gave up; it was like kicking dead
whales down the beach.

  Libraries enable code re-use.  Now programmers don't have to
continuously re-invent the wheel; they can build on the word of
others.  Shared libraries mean you only have to update one .so to fix
a bug or security hole; you don't have to rebuild/update everything
that uses it.  Sounds like a win, right?  But getting everything you
need together in one place, all configured the same way at once, often
proves an incredibly daunting task.

  Is there a general solution to this problem?

> Yes, the x64_86 architecture is supposed to be able to run i386/i586/i686
> binaries ...

  True of the hardware (to some extent), but Linux doesn't seem to
work that way.  "x86_64" is treated as distinct from "i386".  To run
an i386 program, you need to satisfy all the dependencies it would
normally have, as i386 binaries.  For something like a GNOME or KDE
program (either of which tend to depend on about half a gig of
packages), I can image that's quite... interesting.

  Anyone know if this is the "only" way to do it?  If not, why did
Linux go this route?  Does x64 Windows do the same thing?

-- Ben