James Carlson wrote: > Joseph Kowalski writes: >> In any case, I don't see that keeping multiple versions of this stack on >> Solaris makes any sense. We could build versions into the paths, doing >> the moral equivalent of static linking (as seems to be proposed), but it >> seems this would be counter to the assertions just made about path >> compatibility being important when importing from the FOSS world. > > If we have other system bits being delivered (such as subversion) that > depend on out-of-date versions of the stack components, then what > choice do we have? > > We either allow those other system bits to fail in the field, we > deliver and manage to maintain multiple (accumulating) versions, or we > somehow rewrite those other bits to deal with the stack's volatility.
This is precisely the conundrum (and i'm using this to reply to Mr. Kowalski's email as well). Introducing something like PCRE or CURL in Solaris immediately (and implicitly) creates a hard dependency between either of these, and (for example) JDS/GNOME. What happens when JDS wants to upgrade and they need a newer version of PCRE. The immediate consequence is that Apache, PHP and Subversion must go through a full regression test. This is what i meant earlier by the term "Designer Model": every Linux distro release is unique and custom tailored. Its components work together but only in that particular release. Any change, as minuscule as it may be can potentially throw the entire release off balance. As a corollary: i have not seen any of the Linux distros i am familiar with deliver multiple versions of the same "bits". There's only one version of PCRE, there's only one version of CURL, and so on. In my mind (and this is just my thinking, please take it for what it's worth), i would think that these collections of bits (SAMP, GNU, etc), would belong to a different category of "things". These are mostly userland "things", they change very quickly and often in incompatible ways. It would probably be better and more manageable. for customers if these were packaged and delivered *independently* of Solaris. At least this way customers have a way of testing before they commit to a version upgrade. --Stefan -- Stefan Teleman Sun Microsystems, Inc. Stefan.Teleman at Sun.COM
