[OT] Weaknesses of distro package managers - was Re: Python 2 to 3 conversion - embrace the pain

[Michael Torrie]

On 03/16/2015 07:57 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> But the solution isn't necessarily to throw out the packaging system.
> All you need is to expand it. 

Yes.  And of course that's exactly what Poettering is talking about in
his paper.  Despite what many think of him, he's a deep thinker and it's
worth reading what he says about this.

> I don't know how you do it with yum, but
> with apt, you simply add something to /etc/apt/sources.list (or the .d
> directory), grab your index files, and install. That's how I install
> PostgreSQL on Debian Wheezy; the Debian repos ship Postgres 9.1, but
> by simply adding the apt.postgresql.org repo, I can grab 9.4 using the
> exact same system. Ubuntu's PPA system achieves the same thing, as
> mentioned, but even without PPAs, you can still have multiple
> repositories.

PPAs are problematic from a trust point of view.  They aren't a whole
lot better than installing random installers on windows.

> The hardest part is managing library versions, and that's always going
> to be a problem. Sometimes the latest version of an application
> demands a newer version of a library than you have, and if you upgrade
> that library, you might need to upgrade a whole lot else, too, so you
> may as well upgrade everything and call it a new version of the
> distro.

Again this is the core issue that the Poettering crew at RH is working
on.  A cross between images and OS X's framework system.

> The versioning problem is just as much an issue no matter how you try
> to cope with it. Package managers can't magically solve everything,
> but they can make a lot of jobs easier, so on that basis, I say
> they're beneficial. We don't need a 100% solution to be able to make
> use of a 90% solution.

I agree.

Though if I was a developer trying to ship a large package like
LibreOffice, I would be very frustrated though.  Certainly if I was a
commercial app developer, this is a huge stumbling block.