Auto Package

[Mike Hearn]

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:55:10 -0500, Dmitriy Kropivnitskiy wrote:
> So, I understand that in the current version there is no integration
> with the native packaging system. That was my point.

Right.

> Sometimes library API is changed by the upstream and newer version is no
> longer compatible with the older one. Sometimes application is looking
> for a particular version of the library. Sometimes developers use
> undocumented or obsolete features of libraries and those may not be
> available in newer versions. In all these cases the fault is with the
> upstream, but distribution developers still have to deal with these
> problems, since they are the ones users are gonna blame. Library
> conflicts can cause some very strange and difficult to find problems,
> especially since some libraries have rather long dependency chains.

We have various tools and techniques to deal with these problems, but
fundamentally if your program relies on unstable libraries it's got a
problem. Working around that instability, however it's done, is not a
replacement for depending only on stable code.

Distribution developers working around upstreams mistakes is really a last
resort and is not a replacement for actually fixing the bugs, IMHO.

thanks -mike