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> Packages being months behind the latest version is a feature, not a bug — it means things will only be randomly changing under your feet rarely, with the exce

> Packages being months behind the latest version is a feature, not a bug — it means things will only be randomly changing under your feet rarely, with the exception of security fixes. If things are "randomly changing" by updates, that means the upstream package isn't following semantic versioning practices, and more importantly, isn't preserving backwards compatibility with their releases. That's a mark of bad software development practices, and it also isn't solved by an arbitrary wait period: that just means months after the breaking change is done, you finally notice and complain, but most maintainers are going to (rightfully) ignore you by that point. I'd make the same argument in general software quality: with new features, often come new bugs, so by delaying, you can delay introduction of those bugs. However, bugs are easier to fix the sooner they're found, so again, quick turn-around improves things, even if it sometimes causes short-term pain. This is one thing where NPM is definitely miles ahead of APT. With APT, you get a single version of each package, so it's all or nothing. With NPM, you can specify `1.1.x` so even if a version 1.2 or 2.0 comes out, you're on the stable old one. The closest thing that seems to happen with linux packaging is on a major version (with backwards-incompatible changes) a new package name is created with a "2" on the end, to signal this incompatibility -- how is that anything but a hacky workaround to not having proper versioning support?

voltagex_ 7y ago
>With APT, you get a single version of each package, so it's all or nothing. It's definitely not used as often as in npm packages, but you can use =version after your package name to apt install a particular version, or apt pinning for more complex setups.
- Xylakant 7y ago
  The point your parent is making is that with mom, you can install one version of a package per project you’re working on, instead of one version on the system. Especially if you’re working on multiple projects or multiple versions of the same project, this is required.

voltagex_ 7y ago

>With APT, you get a single version of each package, so it's all or nothing. It's definitely not used as often as in npm packages, but you can use =version after your package name to apt install a particular version, or apt pinning for more complex setups.

Xylakant 7y ago
The point your parent is making is that with mom, you can install one version of a package per project you’re working on, instead of one version on the system. Especially if you’re working on multiple projects or multiple versions of the same project, this is required.