[Techtalk] Re: Linux Versions

[Dave North]

dn:
> rpms *do* make me tear my hair out every few months

	I'm no fan of rpms, but I don't think my favorite system (.deb) is
any better in that regard: often things have very complicated dependency
issues that are very messy to resolve.
	And I've done apt-get -f dist-upgrade only to see my entire system
turn into corn meal mush!
	I suspect the problem lies with the poor handling of DLLs themselves,
a common tragedy since they were hatched.
	There are programs that require obscure libraries that are
only a few k; it just gets silly sometimes to not do a static bind and
forget it (or just stick the code in to begin with when possible).
	And often the program itself has stupid dependency rules (which
rpm didn't cause -- or .deb) requiring a _specific_ library version or
program when an entire range will work fine.
	(How many times have you written a softlink to a different
library and had everything work peachy-keen?) A careful job of putting
together an rpm/deb can cure this problem, but that's asking the person
doing the installer to fix the the program.
	Tricky stuff, that.


d