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Re: Discuss-gnustep Digest, Vol 2, Issue 12
From: |
Matthias Klose |
Subject: |
Re: Discuss-gnustep Digest, Vol 2, Issue 12 |
Date: |
06 Jan 2003 23:05:36 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.4 (Common Lisp) |
Richard Frith-Macdonald <richard@brainstorm.co.uk> writes:
> On Sunday, January 5, 2003, at 07:21 am, Jonathan Gapen wrote:
> > A shared library system that addressed these deficiencies would
> > eliminate "RPM dependency hell" for the most part. A new package might
> > require a newer version of libxml2, but you could install that newer
> > version without the need to re-install every other package that
> > depends on
>
> > libxml2. Wouldn't that be nice?
>
> That's how it works now in most package managers isn't it?
"most", but not dpkg and apt-get. I've heard rumors that an apt
version for rpm's exists: rpm-get, which addresses these issues (iff
the rpm dependencies are correct ...)
>
> You can 'upgrade' in which case the new package replaces the old one,
> and if the dynamic libraries in the new package have a different major
> version number than executables linked to the old one will need to be
> upgraded.
>
> Or you can 'install' the new package, leaving the old one in place,
> and other packages won't need upgrading.
>
>
> Of course, the package manager may not keep records properly and may
> force you to re-install packages unnecessarily ... but that's a fault
> of the package manager rather than the shared libraries.
>
>
> My feeling is that unix shared libraries are good for backward
> compatibility, and flexible. I don't really argue with slow, perhaps
> implementations could be faster of course, but startup time is
> fundamentally always going to be slower than static linked software.
>
>
> The only alternative I know of is the windows dll ... and shared
> libraries are superior in all respects to that option ... what
> alternative model are you thinking of? or are you just saying that
> you'd prefer static linkage in spite of the binary size penalty?
>
> I realise that the size may not be a big deal for some people, but I
> only have a 64Kbs link, and the download size is *very* significant to
> me.