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Why do people keep representing this as bizarre when C libraries parallel install just fine and you probably all have multiple versions of the same library inst
by cmsj 16y ago
Why do people keep representing this as bizarre when C libraries parallel install just fine and you probably all have multiple versions of the same library installed right now?
Accept it's a legitimate situation please. What it needs is radical change in languages like ruby/python/etc to resolve dependencies explicitly at runtime. Currently they hide the problem with import path priorities.
- regularfry 16y agoRubygems adds the gem() method, which allows you to specify at runtime which version of a dependency you want, and does not rely on path munging.
- duskwuff 16y ago(late, but replying anyway) Multiple versions of a library are certainly possible with C, but are generally avoided on Debian where possible. Where that isn't possible -- for instance, for libraries which completely changed their API like gtk1.4 -> gtk2, they simply create completely separate packages for the two versions. With gems, this isn't quite so easy, as there's no way to distinguish between a minor bugfix and a huge API-breaking change without either guessing based on the version number or having a human read the changelog. Even then, there's no guarantee that dependent packages will depend on distinct sets of versions.