[packagekit] Catalog, Was: Store

[Matthias Klumpp]

On Wed, 18 May 2011 09:25:11 -0400, Martin Owens <doctormo at gmail.com>
wrote:
> [...]
>> > Why would you need static linking ? Couldn't you use shared libs ?
> 
> Not really, it's a minor miracle if your debian binary deb installs and
> works on Ubuntu correctly or visa versa.
> 
>> For instance, Ubuntu backports qt4 to have xinput2 support, which
>> breaks ABI and apps like scribus. 
> 
> Damn them and all their little wizzardpens! ;-)
This really is a very very stupid thing! I stumbled upon this when I
created a Listaller package for a Qt4 application on Fedora. (Listaller is
my project to realize a cross-distro software install format for home
users, like ZeroInstall, but only for Linux and with seamless system
integration)
Although all dependencies were resolved successfully, the application was
unable to start... How should a developer know this? If I compile a
software against Qt 4.5, I expect it to run everywhere where Qt4.5 is
available, without the need of recompiling it on every single distro
version...
This just sucks. But maybe this will become better in future. Cross-distro
binary compatibility is already much better today than it was a few years
ago.
Regards,
  Matthias