3 ms·

For the most part this is a problem with non-rolling-release distros. There are very few instances in which I've had to even use an installer on Arch. For many

For the most part this is a problem with non-rolling-release distros. There are very few instances in which I've had to even use an installer on Arch. For many of those cases, the AUR provides a package that verifies the hash of the downloaded file anyway. I've constantly been frustrated when using Ubuntu because something basic like having 'vim' not be months out of date requires a PPA. The 'official' Rust installation method is a curl | sh. Or: $ pacman -Q rustup && rustup -V rustup 1.20.2-1 rustup 1.20.2 (2019-10-16)

titanomachy 7y ago
Rolling-release and fixed-version distros serve different purposes. A fixed-version OS has a set of software packages at specific versions which have been tested together, both by test suites and by the many users using the same version set. Security patches and bugfixes get patched in, but the packaged software doesn't undergo major changes. That's important if you're running a critical production system. Rolling-release systems are awesome for personal machines where you can handle breaking updates or work around them. Usually I want the latest versions of everything when I'm doing exploratory stuff. That said, modern software deployment is definitely moving away from "pick an LTS Linux distro and only change your application code", instead we mostly use containers now. A lot of production systems are probably still using the older technique though.
- esotericn 7y ago
  I agree. But no-one should be running this curl | sh nonsense in prod anyway, right. You at least want a defined version so you'd save the artifact instead of piping. To me, the whole thing seems like a solution to a self imposed problem. It reminds me of the old "frankendebian" stuff in which people would be warned against having a system half-stable half-unstable.

3 ms·

For the most part this is a problem with non-rolling-release distros. There are very few instances in which I've had to even use an installer on Arch. For many

by esotericn 7y ago

titanomachy 7y ago
Rolling-release and fixed-version distros serve different purposes. A fixed-version OS has a set of software packages at specific versions which have been tested together, both by test suites and by the many users using the same version set. Security patches and bugfixes get patched in, but the packaged software doesn't undergo major changes. That's important if you're running a critical production system. Rolling-release systems are awesome for personal machines where you can handle breaking updates or work around them. Usually I want the latest versions of everything when I'm doing exploratory stuff. That said, modern software deployment is definitely moving away from "pick an LTS Linux distro and only change your application code", instead we mostly use containers now. A lot of production systems are probably still using the older technique though.
- esotericn 7y ago
  I agree. But no-one should be running this curl | sh nonsense in prod anyway, right. You at least want a defined version so you'd save the artifact instead of piping. To me, the whole thing seems like a solution to a self imposed problem. It reminds me of the old "frankendebian" stuff in which people would be warned against having a system half-stable half-unstable.