> I just has a discussion on a mailing list for another distribution and a > point was raised that I think deserves some discussion here. The main > focus was on linux applications and difficulties in supporting the > different distributions and versions as linux is such a quickly moving > target. > > One of the points raised was that even though there is a filesystem > standard, there is still too much leeway in that some things like system > initialization files and how they are arrainged can differ widely from one > distribution to the next. It was noted that debian does its /etc/rc.* > completely different than RedHat does as an example. > > Is there any REALLY GOOD reason for stuff like this? I know that the next > distribution is likely to cause a lot of turmoil with the libc6 thing and > a lot of work needs to go into recompliling the world but how about if we > have a look at this in some future release.
Generally, Debian approach is technically cleaner in many such cases. > > Maybe we should sit down, take a hard look at some of the other popular > distributions (Slackware, RedHat, Caldera), look at how they have some > common things set up and see if some proposals can be created to take the > best concepts from the distributions and try to come up with a more > unified approach to basic system layout issues. I think it was already done. What is needed is that not only Debian took a hard look, but other distributions also, which is quite improbable. > I use the rc.* stuff as a basic example because if an application needs to > update an init script or create one, you basicly need completely different > code for each installation script. > > Linux International should probably be in on this as well. Unless there > is some compelling technical reason to do something a particular way > (other than that was simply how the distribution evolved and changing it > will break all the contrib packages) then a standard method should be > adopted. I am not talking about a merger in packaging formats (though > that WOULD be nice) but a look at how the different distributions vary in > their construction, figure out if there is any good REASON for it, and > decide on a standard. > > Until the different distributions come closer together in this regard, I > fear that you will see commercial applications coming only for commercial > distributions that can pay developers to create the stuff based on their > format. This may cause other distributions with wither on the vine over > time as good applications became easy to find for the other distributions. Sure, this is very important point. But... filesystem standard is good enough to insure compatibility of _applications_ in most cases (if not all of them). The "Debian and commercial software" problem lies in a completely different place... > > Chances of getting the source for a commercial app and being able to > custom build it for another distribution would be pretty slim. > > > George Bonser > > Segmentation Fault just kidding :) -- _ _( )_ ( (o___ +-------------------------------------------+ | _ 7 | Alexander Yukhimets | \ (") | http://pages.nyu.edu/~aqy6633/ | / \ \ +-------------------------------------------+ -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .