3 ms·

No, it's not symptomatic. The problem is that about 80% of packages in distributions could be compiled against older versions of dependencies, but never do. Be

by kfool 16y ago

No, it's not symptomatic. The problem is that about 80% of packages in distributions could be compiled against older versions of dependencies, but never do. Be default, distributions mark in the packages the dependency of their currently installed libraries, ignoring the fact that the software could have been compiled against an older version of the library too. There's no mechanism for identifying such minimum possible dependencies.

jacobolus 16y ago
> There's no mechanism for identifying such minimum possible dependencies. Is this true? It seems like this would be one of the most obvious essential features of any package management system.
dinedal 16y ago
Not sure that's true, most packaging systems allow the maintainer to specify the lowest version their software is compatible with. Of course, it may be that the maintainer always specifies the latest version,
- kfool 16y ago
  The maintainer does not specify a version and expects the automatic process of determining minimumum dependencies to take over. But it takes over with dependencies of newer versions than necessary.
nailer 16y ago
> There's no mechanism for identifying such minimum possible dependencies. Er, yes there is, and there has been for at least the last 12 years, and probably more. Requires: python >= 2.6.1
- kfool 16y ago
  What you mention is a manual mechanism which is not often used. Instead, developers say: Requires: python The automatic mechanism in place is to run ldd, identify the list of libraries used by the executables distributed, and mark those libraries as dependencies. Since the package is build on your newer, Debian 5 package, it requires (automatically) the newer libfoo (like python-2.7), while it would have worked just fine with the older libfoo (python-2.5).
  - nailer 16y ago
    >>> There's no mechanism for identifying such minimum possible dependencies. >> Yes there is > What you mention is a manual mechanism I agree, they should ditch the automatic ldd method. I justy wanted to correct the inaccuracy of saying there wasn't a way to specify min versions.

by kfool 16y ago

jacobolus 16y ago

> There's no mechanism for identifying such minimum possible dependencies. Is this true? It seems like this would be one of the most obvious essential features of any package management system.

dinedal 16y ago

Not sure that's true, most packaging systems allow the maintainer to specify the lowest version their software is compatible with. Of course, it may be that the maintainer always specifies the latest version,

kfool 16y ago
The maintainer does not specify a version and expects the automatic process of determining minimumum dependencies to take over. But it takes over with dependencies of newer versions than necessary.

nailer 16y ago

> There's no mechanism for identifying such minimum possible dependencies. Er, yes there is, and there has been for at least the last 12 years, and probably more. Requires: python >= 2.6.1

kfool 16y ago
What you mention is a manual mechanism which is not often used. Instead, developers say: Requires: python The automatic mechanism in place is to run ldd, identify the list of libraries used by the executables distributed, and mark those libraries as dependencies. Since the package is build on your newer, Debian 5 package, it requires (automatically) the newer libfoo (like python-2.7), while it would have worked just fine with the older libfoo (python-2.5).
- nailer 16y ago
  >>> There's no mechanism for identifying such minimum possible dependencies. >> Yes there is > What you mention is a manual mechanism I agree, they should ditch the automatic ldd method. I justy wanted to correct the inaccuracy of saying there wasn't a way to specify min versions.