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I'm want to agree with you, but I have a question. Binaries tested against what? Obviously the testsuite that upstream uses, but every program will have dynam

I'm want to agree with you, but I have a question. Binaries tested against what? Obviously the testsuite that upstream uses, but every program will have dynamic dependencies into the distro. In that case wouldn't the upstream maintainers have to test every version or every distro to make sure it works for you? That seems time intensive (not infeasible, but it would become chaotic very quickly when we multiply the number of distros by the number of apps people want). I'd also presume that the upstream maintainers include their testsuite with their source, so nothing should prevent the downstream distro maintainers from running the testsuite before shipping (I have always assumed they do, I hope I'm not wrong).

wmf 16y ago
If there hadn't been multiple divergent distros in the first place, upstream developers wouldn't be faced with the prospect of a huge testing effort. The result seems to be that we're locked into a model of getting all software from the distros, but they don't necessarily have the resources to do a good job of packaging everything. If you're willing to take some abuse you can release server software only on RHEL/SLES and desktop apps only on Ubuntu and tell everyone else to fend for themselves.
- sophacles 16y ago
  And further, there should have only ever been one webserver, one database, one KV store, one programming language and one CPU architecture right? The crappy webapp you work on, which is described as "like $x but better" probably shouldn't be in existence at all, because we already have $x.