3 ms·

I definitely get what hippich is saying. The idea is that when you have a community built around a platform, and that community is, well, communal (cooperative

by djacobs 16y ago

I definitely get what hippich is saying. The idea is that when you have a community built around a platform, and that community is, well, communal (cooperative in some ways), solutions emerge to avoid conflicts and problems like this. (RubyGems for Ruby, CPAN for Python, aptitude for Debian, RPM, etc., etc.) According to hippich (and I agree), that kind of community and spirit only ever emerges when we are sharing code.

hippich 16y ago
roel_v, just like he said =) (except, CPAN is for Perl =)). Probably, API is incorrectly referenced here. But idea is - if something really shared, community using this something shared will be able to find a way to avoid conflicts.
- Someone 16y ago
  Another way to describe some of that community effort is 'work very hard to bury conflicts so deep that, ideally, nobody will find them'. As an extreme example consider ./configure
- djacobs 16y ago
  Oops, yes CPAN is indeed for Perl. I guess I give myself away as a Rubyist...
roel_v 16y ago
So what are the solutions that have arisen? Dependencies are still a bitch on any platform. Usually the way to handle dependencies is 'write your code with the latest version of the libraries at that time, then deploy with a private copy' or 'check application every few weeks, hope no libraries were upgraded, if they were upgrade your code'. How many applications do you know that you can take in the version they were 5 years ago and run them on a modern distro? I've used Linux for over 10 years and I wouldn't bet 5 cents on being able to find any software from 5 years ago that would run unmodified on a modern installation. How does Ruby or Python keep track of old versions of libraries? How does it ensure that, when you start a program, the exact library is used that the application was written and tested against?

3 ms·

I definitely get what hippich is saying. The idea is that when you have a community built around a platform, and that community is, well, communal (cooperative

by djacobs 16y ago

hippich 16y ago
roel_v, just like he said =) (except, CPAN is for Perl =)). Probably, API is incorrectly referenced here. But idea is - if something really shared, community using this something shared will be able to find a way to avoid conflicts.
- Someone 16y ago
  Another way to describe some of that community effort is 'work very hard to bury conflicts so deep that, ideally, nobody will find them'. As an extreme example consider ./configure
- djacobs 16y ago
  Oops, yes CPAN is indeed for Perl. I guess I give myself away as a Rubyist...
roel_v 16y ago
So what are the solutions that have arisen? Dependencies are still a bitch on any platform. Usually the way to handle dependencies is 'write your code with the latest version of the libraries at that time, then deploy with a private copy' or 'check application every few weeks, hope no libraries were upgraded, if they were upgrade your code'. How many applications do you know that you can take in the version they were 5 years ago and run them on a modern distro? I've used Linux for over 10 years and I wouldn't bet 5 cents on being able to find any software from 5 years ago that would run unmodified on a modern installation. How does Ruby or Python keep track of old versions of libraries? How does it ensure that, when you start a program, the exact library is used that the application was written and tested against?