Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2255 mails)

[Larry Stotler <larrystotler@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Richard Creighton <rccj@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Perhaps the PulseAudio issue of dependency is not the real issue.   I think 
> Larry was trying
> to point out that LAZY programming practices where dependencies are made at 
> much to high
> levels and bring in entire systems of often unrelated programs and subsystems 
> that have no >bearing or support for the program the library/dependency was 
> added to with perhaps only 1 or
> two of the lower level subsystems included in that higher level library.   A 
> proper dependency
> would be to separate the lower level sub-library and make that the dependency. 
>   Of course, >that takes extra work and given it only adds a megabyte or a few 
> hundred kilobytes to do it
> the easy way, they just add the whole kaboodle...and don't even make a stub 
> library AND the
> big 'kaboodle' library which could then be left out if someone wanted to 
> remove the package >without destroying the links you mentioned necessary for 
> those other functions you mentioned
> used by KDE, Gnome or other libraries that might use the package.   Now, other 
> lazy
> inclusions by other packagers include (in this case) PulseAudio as a library 
> which now can't
> be removed because it includes stuff that can't be removed because it includes 
> things that
> depend on things it loads due to ether lazy practices which prevade todays 
> programming.
>  So, we end up with Dependency Hell and OpenSuSE becomes increasingly 
> competitive with
> Windoze in terms of size and bloat and difficulty of maintainence or 
> troubleshooting.

Thank you for explaining it when I couldn't.  The above is probably my
biggest complaint overall.

> Listen, I love Linux, truly think OpenSuSE is one of, if not the best 
> distributions available, but
> that doesn't mean that constructive criticism from people like Larry that 
> happen to disagree
> with a particular direction it is taking (and he is not alone if you read all 
> the posts) or if he or
> others that simply want the extremely high standards that OpenSuSE has 
> achieved to be
> maintained or advanced and NOT be compromised and reduced to the lowest common
> denominator of the Windoze world.

I expect great things from openSUSE because I was able able to have a
great thing called SuSE.

> That, Carlos, is why I was so suprised to see you suggest to Larry that he 
> abandon his
> choice of distribution for *anything* else as opposed to supporting his call 
> for suggesting
> implementing your idea of a stub library plus the existing library (if not a 
> proper subset >containing only the actual required subroutines) instead of the 
> all or nothing dependency hell
> that is increasingly perpetuated by PA and others recently that Larry was 
> complaining about.

I don't like giving up.  But I can't say I care for the direction of
openSUSE recently and the relentless push to include stuff that's not
up to the standards that we are all used to.  KDE4 wasn't ready.
Beagle wasn't ready.  red carpet and libbzypp wasn't ready, but zypper
emerged.  I have no issue with having those things in factory until
they are stable and mature.  I don't agree with forcing them in way
before they are ready.
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