Hugh McIntyre writes: > Perhaps what's needed is what Fink does on MacOS X. There are a few > pseudo-packages such as X11 that can be satisfied by more than one real > package, such as "system-x11" (Apple's version) or "X.org" (from fink).
That's also what Debian does. That fixes the dependency problem, but doesn't fix the path problem. The path problem for libraries is that if one installs as /opt/csw/lib/libfoo.so.1 and the other installs as /opt/sfw/lib/libfoo.so.1 then one can't really satisfy the other. The user is forced straight into LD_LIBRARY_PATH or crle(1) hell, and that's just not right. And it's not just libraries. Regular applications that are invoked by scripts (would you like /opt/csw/bin/wget or /opt/sfw/bin/wget or /usr/bin/wget to be found?) run into the path problem as well. And then there are all of the ancillary bits, like man and info pages, data files, configuration interfaces, and so on. We need to fix those problems once and for all if any sort of common- dependency mechanism is going to be useful. The alternative is to nuke /opt from the system and just install everything under /usr. > Certainly I'm also a user of Blastwave, although like Bart's recent > comment, it would be nice if there could be less replacement of internal > packages. Not just "would be nice." I don't care about the disk space (I use Blastwave regularly and enjoy it; the CCD bits are just too stale for me). What I do care about is the library tragedy. Having two separate libraries on the system that implement the same thing is toxic to applications: you're just one dynamic link away from a mystifying core dump. (This is in part why you rarely ever find more than one libthing.so.N library.) -- James Carlson, KISS Network <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
