Re: Building Hell

Thus quoth Brandon Warhurst on Thu, Mar 10, 2005 at 09:46:04PM +0000:
> 
> newbie to general dependency hell.  In fact, it really started with
> source distributions.  You'd get some distributions of some great new
> software package, you'd explode the source, try to make it, and it would
> fail.  You'd find out you needed package Z to complete your install...
> and so on and so forth... Sounds like general dependency hell so far.
> Well, the thing I find annoying about linux, is that while back then,
> this was an "annoying" task, it was feasible.  Now, linux has succeeded
> in making this much less feasible.  Why Linux?  Well, mainly because it
> was the impetus for the Open Source Movement.  While I love the OSM like
> the next geek, the biggest problem is the fact that it *IS* free and
> open.  People are free to choose whatever language suits them, choose
> whatever libraries are convenient, and build in whatever way they feel
> like.  All this freedom sounds good.  And in general, it is good.  The

I have been using using SCO Unix and recently HP-UX. If you want to use an
Open Source package, you often have to compile it yourself, because it is
not available for your version. Program A depends on libraries B, C, and D,
and these in turn require one or more libraries of their own. I got the 
Subversion revision control system running and Perl and Python came along
for the ride. One program, maybe it was the Firefox, required both version 
1.2 and 2.0 of the GTK library. After a while you end up with half the GNU
zoo. 

Troublesome as the procedure is, and wasting many hours of compile time, you
mostly wind up with a (more or less) working product. Having Linux binaries
requiring libX11.so.3 (that's in a.out format) is more frustrating.

Having said that, the absence of central control aggravates the problem and
causes Linux to become more bloated than the OS from Redmond. And then there's
the complex incoherence of user interface styles. 

Kind regards,


Daniel von Asmuth

-- 
		Neighbourman's embedded
		with my active ex.
		His joystick has gone floppy
		now they're not having sex.