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

Thomas Charron twaffle at gmail.com
Tue Feb 27 08:54:55 EST 2007


On 2/26/07, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>   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?

  Install everything.  :-D

> > 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?

  An i386 application needs i386 libraries.  An x64 needs x64
libraries.  i386 application can run under x64 without a hitch, but
don't expect it to load a libgnome compiled for x64.

  x64 windows has similar issues.

-- 
-- Thomas


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