Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2008 mails)

[Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 9:11 AM, Roger Oberholtzer <roger@xxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-04-16 at 08:22 -0400, Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:
>
> > The one flaw to this approach is when the programmer links into a library
> > that is thought to be stable but is buggy. Then people are forced to
> > install the buggy software which causes problems.
> >
> > There are good programmers that know the difference and poor/lazy
> > programmers that don't care.
>
> !!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> As a programmer, what control could I possibly have on which version of
> a library is installed at runtime on some other system? Not all
> libraries identify their version to the app, so I could not refuse to
> run if the point release does not match some magic list of good ones. At
> best, the version of the library is controlled by the name of the .so
> file. The program linker (not the code programmer - maybe the
> configure/Makefile author) controls that. But that still requires this
> magic list of good versions that can be consulted.
>
> Or are you meaning something else?

Pretty sure the specifics of what libraries have to be available is
definable in a spec file for rpm installs, and in a debian.rules file
for debian based systems.

Historically I don't think programmers have worked with those files
and left it to the distro packagers to do it.

With the Opensuse Build Service (OBS) it becomes much more feasible
for a programmer to take responsibility / advantage of the
capabilities of these packaging tools.

FYI: The OBS also allows a distro packager to "patch" the default spec
/ rules I believe, so even if it is not perfect, having a base set of
files can help the packagers by giving them something to work with.

Greg
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