Firefox 2 on Dapper

[Art Alexion]

On Tuesday 16 January 2007 11:54, Donn wrote:
> > Did you try to install FF 2 in the /usr branch?
>
> I ran it from ~/bin/firefox/ would that make it unstable for some reason?

Wouldn't think so.  Haven't tried it.  Should have the same effect as moving 
it to /opt.  I haven't tried it with FF 2, I did it with FF 1.5 when I was on 
breezy.  That worked fine.

>
> > Another factor is dependencies.  When a Linux app needs a
> > particular lib version, it makes it known and requires you install it.
> > Windows apps just include another version of the DLL in the install.
>
> Okay this is getting down to it. So a newer distro would have a *totally*
> new library (libBlah) that an earlier version would not have and all new
> software is thus compiled to talk to libBlah.
> Right, I can see that... but ... why do the API's have to change so often?
> Why can't libBlah support the old API's too? 

You have it backwards.  It isn't an issue of libBlah supporting older calls, 
it is a matter of package newappversion requiring calls that are found in 
libBlah-2, but not in the libBlah-1 that you have.  What should work is that 
libBlah-2 should include the calls found in libBlah-1, and oldapps, buiilt 
for libBlah-1, should accept libBlah-2 as satisfying a dependency.

What often happens with Kubuntu upgrades, though, is that libBlah gets renamed 
to something like libcoreBlah and the newappversion doesn't see libBlah as a 
version of libcoreBlah. Among the things that backporters do is make changes 
to newappversion-backport so that it recognizes these things.

Another problem is that entire subsystems may change with new app versions.  
For instance amarok 1.4 just couldn't be made to run on the kde version that 
came with breezy because it had changed so fundamentally.

> I don't code C, so these 
> things are a little foreign, but I picture a set of functions and/or
> classes that can be used by an app, why can't libBlah keep those same names
> and parameters etc, just add newer ones on for the newer API?
>
> > This
> > leaves multiple and conflicting versions of particular DLLs on your
> > system, leading to instability and unpredictability. Makes windows easier
> > to use (n terms of installs), but much more unstable.
>
> I am not flaming here -- I really have not found Windows from 2000 onwards
> to be unstable. It just plain works. I hate it to pieces, don't get me
> wrong, but I won't ascribe problems to it that I have never experienced.
>
> What would be so wrong about having multiple versions of libBlah on a
> system? /d

-- 

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Art Alexion

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