On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 9:11 AM, Roger Oberholtzer
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 -- Greg Freemyer Head of EDD Tape Extraction and Processing team Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org