Software repository question

[Liam Proven]

On 24 May 2011 12:33, dave boland <dboland9 at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> All,
>
> I have noticed that the repositories for my ver. of Ubuntu, 10.04 LTS,
> has one level of software, and 11.04 has newer versions of the same
> software.  Why?  Shouldn't older versions of Ubuntu have easy access to
> newer software?  I can understand the issue if a newer kernel is
> required, but if it is only a normal dependency issue, then the software
> manager should handle that -- right?
>
> The bottom line is that all users should have access to latest stable
> apps (or unstable if one wants the risk) without muss or fuss.
>
> <comment>
> It is time for an app store for all Linux distributions.  The apps need
> to have a rating (like Tucows), description, perhaps multiple levels,
> etc.
>
> There will be problems with all of the packaging methods, but that
> should be easy to resolve if the will is there.
> </comment>

As others have said - it doesn't work like that. Upgrade a package,
you must upgrade all its dependencies. Fortunately, in APT, we have a
very smart package manager that can do this automatically - a feature
bolted-on to RPM much later and in several incompatible ways (YUM,
URPMI, YAST etc. depending on RPM-based distro).

APT fetches all the dependencies, and then recurses through all them
and fetches all /their/ dependencies, repeating all the way down the
list. At the end result, one program depending on one newer feature
can upgrade half your operating system!

This is why there are specific releases, with programs held at a
particular level - it makes life much easier.

If you want to try the rolling-release model, then try Linux Mint
Debian Edition. Unlike normal Mint, which is based on Ubuntu, LMDE is
based off Debian Testing - which never gets released, it is just
frozen for a specific release every year or so.

LMDE thus constantly has rolling updates.

I run it as a backup/spare system on 1 of my laptops. It's OK - not as
polished as Ubuntu but it works.

If you want to split all programs up separately and install whatever
you want without dependencies, look at this:
http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/

-- 
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
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