On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 14:10, Darren J Moffat wrote: > Peter Tribble wrote: > > That's not at all reasonable. I certainly don't want applications > > or libraries that I may need to install my own versions of in > > the standard system locations. Doing so only makes the possibility > > of conflict more likely. Shoving things like openssl away in > > /usr/sfw is nice and safe - it gives you the option of using > > them (if you wish) or ignoring them completely (if you wish). > > What exactly is it about OpenSSL that makes it so special for you > that you need to do this ?
Well, it's not *just* OpenSSL, but that was the main topic in the thread. Actually, my experience is that openssl is incredibly fragile. If I build 0.9.7 myself and use my version then I have very few problems, but building against the /usr/sfw version gave me a lot of grief, and I've had no luck with 0.9.8 either. > Why can't you as the person building the local software that needs > its own local version use your local copy ? Proper use of > ld(1) and ld.so.1(1) flags,config files and environment already > allow this. Yes, I know. And I don't have any problems. And perhaps libssl as a particular example would be safe - the dependency chain isn't that complex. (Although the fragility and lack of stability guarantees does worry me.) Remember also that the end user typically has little control over building software now that autoconf and friends try to be "helpful". > Why doesn't this apply for other things /usr/lib or /lib ? It does, of course. The desktop in particular puts an awful lot of stuff into system locations to be picked up by other applications. (The one I remember having a lot of grief with was libxml2.) > Do you do this on other platforms as well ? IIRC RedHat and SuSE > both ship OpenSSL's libssl and libcrypto in /usr/lib. So how is > this "problem" dealt with on systems like that ? Well, I don't have access to any other platforms right now ;-) I don't remember any particular problem with ssl from when I did have RedHat boxes. Other problems came up - I still don't believe that shoving everything into a single common location, giving it a good stir, and hoping for the best, is particularly good practice. My problem really is with libraries that don't have compatibility built in. For an example of something that just works and doesn't give problems, then look at X11. If only everything else were that simple. -- -Peter Tribble L.I.S., University of Hertfordshire - http://www.herts.ac.uk/ http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
