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Yes, its kinda funny, I mean package managers are probably the ones with the most solid experience in dependency management and when I look at them I can see ma
by JepZ 9y ago
Yes, its kinda funny, I mean package managers are probably the ones with the most solid experience in dependency management and when I look at them I can see many different concepts at work there. Some like for example pacman are bold and are not afraid to break a system during upgrade (as it is very unlikely that the upgrade will fail) and others put an abnormal amount of effort to ensure an always functional system at any time (especially on source based distributions, e.g. paludis).
And while I have been using development snapshots for years with my system and didn't have more bugs to cope with compared to other systems, I can understand that developers in corporate contexts need to be able to specify dependencies with versions. So I appreciate that proposal very much and hope it will lead to a better solution for every body involved by providing a way to use versioned dependencies without introducing too much overhead for those who don't need versioned dependencies.
- flukus 9y agoPacman, apt-get, et al also have something most language specific package managers don't, maintainers. Maintainers back port security fixes and are careful not to break binary compatibility. A random $lang specific package is unlikely to have either, if you expect a bug fix you have to upgrade to the latest version. Developers that don't want to provide this sort of stability typically hate distro package managers. No package manager can fix a cultural problem.
- vk23 9y agoIf you rely on dependencies that are not maintained you are already in trouble. Being the author/maintainer of a package comes with a responsibility. NPM already showed us what happens if you just let people do their thing.