Re: To package or not to package (Was: [tlug] Well now I'm hosed - Dapper/Edgy died)

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

On Thu, Jan 18, 2007 at 09:04:49AM +0900, Josh Glover wrote:
> On 18/01/07, Sigurd Urdahl <sigurdur@example.com> wrote:
> 
> >Godwin, could you elaborate a bit more on why you believe source-based
> >distros are better than package based?
> 
> I'm not Godwin, but I'll have my say if that is OK.
> 
> >I have seen circular dependencies create problems, but only been bitten
> >by it a couple of times.
> 
> Same here; I just consider a couple of times a couple too many.
> 

I've seen it in Gentoo as well. In fairness, I've not used it in years,
but I do remember a bunch of them with cups and ghostscript.  Also, in
fairness, it was easily resolved by doing install <problem package>
--nodeps, but many distros, including Arch (which gives you the best of
both worlds--you can use the binary packages or use their PKGBUILDS
which are similar to ebuilds but simpler to write) gives the option of
installing a binary package with no dependencies to work around that
problem. 

My only point here, aside from having fun tweaking Josh, is that even
with source based distros, there might be dependency problems.  Godwin
of course, is a Slackware die hard, and Slack is one of the few distros
remaining that doesn't do dependency checking.  (However, there are 3rd
party apps like slapt-get that do check dependencies.)

-- 

Scott Robbins

PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

Willy: What are you gonna' do with him, anyway? 
Spike: I'm thinkin' maybe dinner and a movie. I don't want to 
rush into anything. I've been hurt, you know.