[arch-general] libreadline.so issues

[bardo]

2009/7/14 Vincent Van Houtte <vvh at synergylaw.be>:
> Again, I know I have to keep my Archlinux-systems up to date, but I didn't
> have the time to completely update that particular pc, still wanting to
> update firefox since my grandfather *only* uses firefox on his computer. I
> just didn't know pacman didn't handle all dependencies for me and I thought
> upgrading a simple webbrowser would be safe.

Firefox "a simple webbrowser"? You're joking, I hope... it's one of
the most complex web browsers available for linux! Just because I
don't know about Opera enough to exclude it...

Abput versioning dependencies, you're right, but it can't be always
done. You can tie a package to a specific version of a dependency, but
then when you update that dependency you also have to update the
package; this is really inefficient.
Otherwise, you can use the '>=' operator. Then the dependency's ABI
could change, triggering a recompilation of the app requiring it, but
the package manager would never know. This is what's happening now
with libreadline and libjpeg. There's no automated way of handling
every case.

Corrado