On Oct 1, 2008, at 19:10 PM, Tarek Ziadé wrote:
I hate the idea of dynamic metadata in fact. I can't express precisely
why at that point.
Me too and me too.
Perhaps it would help to distinguish between requiring a certain
functionality and requiring a specific codebase which implements that
functionality.
For example: distribution A requires the functionality of ctypes.
That part is statically, declaratively always true.
However, distribution A doesn't necessarily require a *distribution*
named "ctypes". If you are running on Python 2.6, then that
functionality is already present. If there is a new distribution out
there named "new_ctypes" which provides the same functionality and
the same interface but is a completely different code base, then the
presence of "new_ctypes" satisfies distribution A's requirements.
The former question is simple, static, and declarative. The latter
question isn't.
In most cases there is only one implementation of a given interface,
so we make do by equating the interface with the implementation.
I wonder how Debian and Fedora handle this sort of issue?
Regards,
Zooko
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