On Fri, Feb 02, 2007 at 05:39:08PM +0100, Uwe Stöhr wrote: > > Following this logic, I should update each component of my OS everytime > > an application pretends that I should have the latest/shinest versions > > without a real need for them. > > > > Version: @(#)ImageMagick 5.4.7 07/01/02 Q:16 http://www.imagemagick.org > > Copyright: Copyright (C) 2002 ImageMagick Studio LLC > > No, but a 5 years old Imagemagick is very risky. > Its provoking, but do we have to take care about such old program versions?
Let me be more provoking. So, to solve a bug related to PDF files generated by an obscure application on Mac, you are willing to break LyX on an entire platform?! > If yes we'll be > technically limited in fixing bugs related to third-party products and > for new features. For example the new unicode stuff is only possible > with teTeX 3 (2 years old). There are still distributions shipping > teTeX 2 which is without unicode support. I am using teTeX 2 on Solaris, and I really didn't notice that it was not working. That's strange, because I just compiled a big document and it looks just fine. > Another example: to get LyX running Python 2.2 better 2.3 is required. > I now gort some bug reports that some Dell and Compaq computers are > delivered with older Python versions. (I solved this by shipping the > needed python 2.5 files with the installer, the same as I do for > ImageMagick as this program always made some troubles.) The fact that python < 2.2 does not work, is not due to an obscure command line argument which helps when you produce a PDF image at 7 PM on system XYZ using application ABC. > In my opinion we cannot take care about all old program versions. I am speaking about software delivered with the latest Solaris 10 release. If they bundle an old version, I cannot do much about it. These are production machines which cannot follow the update strategy followed in Debian/unstable/testing, for example, but rather the one in Debian/stable. Each component should be guaranteed to work together with all other OS components. Maybe a later version of ImageMagick breaks something, and until they fix it, they will deliver an older version, or who knows what. -- Enrico
