Re: New package managment

[Mark Collins <mcollins@night.openworld.co.uk>]

On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Jarda Benkovsky bleated:

> "Philipp Gühring" wrote:
> > 
> > [...]
> > 
> > >If such a scheme were to become more widespread, it would do GREAT
> > >things
> > >for source-based packages.  People simply **HATE** following the paper
> > >trail to get all the libraries that a complex modern game needs.
> 
> It uses to be stated in the download page. If it is not, feel free to 
> email the author.
> 
> > But I have to question one thing:
> > In my opinion, there are two kinds of people.
> > The ones who don´t know enough about sourcecode.
> >   They don´t have compilers and stuff like that installed (What do
> >   I need a compiler for? I want to play a game, write some texts, ...)
> >   Those people need binary packages, as statically linked as possible.
> 
> NOOOOooo!!!
> 
> Static linked binaries are evil! They eat disk space, RAM and bandwidth,
> start longer and if the library is upgraded (e.g. for security reasons) 
> you have to upgrade the binary also to use it. Static binaries are good
> for 
> things like root's shell, chrooted ls or the likes, but nothing more.
> And BTW for binary only programs it violates GPL if you statically
> link libc or another GPL'ed library.
> 
> The normal solution for dynamically linked binaries is to add package
> dependency in the package. With debian it's not a problem and for
> example
> apt will prompt you to download all dependencies when installing
> package.
> IIRC rpm has file dependencies only (which is not so useful) but
> maybe Redhat has already changed it?
> 
> 					Edheldil
> 
glibx isn't relased under the GPL, it's released under the LGPL, which
allows it to be used in non-GPLed systems. The reason for this is that
there would be near zero commercial support if anything that linked
against glibc, static or shared, would have to be GPLed.


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