[arch-general] A suggestion for the devs regarding rebuilds

[fons at kokkinizita.net]

On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 05:56:31PM -0700, Brendan Long wrote:

> Why are you even using Arch?

Because it allows me to get recent versions of apps,
it doesn't force me to install a desktop I don't want,
and some other reasons.

> You sound like the kind of person who would want a
> "stable" distro like Ubuntu or Debian.

I ran away screaming from those.

> Your changes sound like they would break the best
> parts of Arch (updates and simple packages).

They would not break anything at all.

And in a sense, it's broken today:

I use pacman to install app A depending on
libfoo.so.1. Pacman knows about that dependency
and install the lib as well. OK so far.

Two weeks later I use again pacman to install app
B that depends on libfoo.so.2 (as does everything
in the repo by that time). Again pacman knows 
about the dependency and installs libfoo.so.2

But then: pacman knows that A is installed and
depends on libfoo.so.1. But still it removes
that library. Why ? I'd just say it fails to
do its job, part of which is being aware of
dependencies. 

As to the 'why', the reason is not that pacman
doesn't have a choice. It has. The filenames for
the new lib are different. The symlink from
libfoo.so can be set to the new version - app
A does not depend on that symlink. All other
related files (man pages, etc.) can be updated
as well, as app A does not depend on them. It
only needs libfoo.so.1 pointing to the original
library.

I fully agree that I should update app A, and
I would very probably do that quite soon (unless
there are good reasons for not updating, which
is possible). But is that a good reason to make
app A break in the meantime ? Are there any good
reasons for doing that except 'religious' ones ?


Ciao,

-- 
FA

O tu, che porte, correndo si ?
E guerra e morte !