Re: Discussion about why GNU/Linux system upgrades cause old programs to break

"Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide" <[email protected]> Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:56:08 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.emacs.devel
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Richard Stallman <[email protected]> writes:

> When users link a program, and it links in a managed dynamic library
> that might later get replaced by a newer version, that could add the
> library to a system-wide list of "managed dynamic libraries that users
> use in their own programs".  This list would tell `apt autoremove' not
> to delete those libraries.

This would mean that we’d need some kind of common hook for
distributions that build processes can use to register their
dependencies -- in a way that records why the dependency was added, so
it can be removed again when the user removes the programs source
directory.

The library needs to be marked as removable when it’s no longer required
for the build, because incompatibilities between libraries could
otherwise prevent updating the distribution.

I don’think that’s so much of a technical problem but a social one: the
different distributions would need to agree on a standard and a way to
report problems due to stale builds.

Best wishes,
Arne
-- 
Unpolitisch sein
heißt politisch sein,
ohne es zu merken.
https://www.draketo.de

signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 1.1 KB)