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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