standard dependancy system

[Patryk Zawadzki]

2007/12/11, James Richard Tyrer <tyrerj at acm.org>:
> Yes!!!! You have correctly stated the problem which XDG needs to address
> and solve.  If 3rd party (commercial) applications are to succeed for
> Linux based systems, there must be a way for them to install on any
> system using at the most an RPM and a Deb package (or a Deb the can be
> converted with Alien).

That's no problem, just depend on file names instead of package names
or compile statically.

> Note that any system should work with both Deb and RPM packages and also
> with libraries installed from source (or at least those that have an
> *.pc file) or other install system.  IAC, it would be good for the
> system to actually look at the system to see what is installed rather
> than just relying on a data base.

This is where we disagree. Admins are responsible for keeping their
systems tidy, having multiple libraries installed from sources is very
likely to affect other applications without giving them a way to
express this (this is what package dependencies do). Also compiling
new software might lead to undesirable results (*.so linked from
version 1 while *.pc from version 2 and similar) that in turn
destabilise the whole system. If third party vendors want their
software to install nicely, it's just a matter of asking packagers.

Please reply to the list.

-- 
Patryk Zawadzki
PLD Linux Distribution