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> Now what? Discard the outdated assumption that a single installed dependency version is sufficient for all packages, and then improve the packaging system to

> Now what? Discard the outdated assumption that a single installed dependency version is sufficient for all packages, and then improve the packaging system to permit multiple releases of Rust, Python, etc. to coexist as dependencies so that packages can migrate gradually over time rather than forcibly whenever one crosses the line. Homebrew does a fine job of this. Installing python@2 doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be made “the default”, but it does make it available for dependencies without interfering with the default python 3 package. EDIT: NixOS does this right: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22023086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22023086

int_19h 7y ago
Python 2/3 is not a representative example, because it's actually designed to be installed side-by-side by the authors. Many libraries and apps on Unix are not. NixOS changes a lot of things to make it all work. If you're willing to pay that tax for the sake of package management, great! People who use BSDs generally aren't.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  Python 2/3 is not a representative example, because it's actually designed to be installed side-by-side by the authors. Many libraries and apps on Unix are not. Rust is designed to support multiple toolchains with rustup. I've got the following installed on my desktop box: stable-x86_64-apple-darwin nightly-2018-12-14-x86_64-apple-darwin nightly-arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin (default)
  - int_19h 7y ago
    If I remember correctly, the granularity for this mechanism is pretty much arbitrary - i.e. you can have 1.2.3 and 1.2.4 installed side by side if you wanted to. From a practical perspective, if this means that the apps can start depending on 1.2.3 specifically, it requires the distro to package every minor version separately, which is very time- and space-consuming. With gcc and clang it's easier, because usually only the major versions get packaged side by side, and minor versions are simple upgrades.

int_19h 7y ago

Python 2/3 is not a representative example, because it's actually designed to be installed side-by-side by the authors. Many libraries and apps on Unix are not. NixOS changes a lot of things to make it all work. If you're willing to pay that tax for the sake of package management, great! People who use BSDs generally aren't.

inferiorhuman 7y ago
Python 2/3 is not a representative example, because it's actually designed to be installed side-by-side by the authors. Many libraries and apps on Unix are not. Rust is designed to support multiple toolchains with rustup. I've got the following installed on my desktop box: stable-x86_64-apple-darwin nightly-2018-12-14-x86_64-apple-darwin nightly-arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin (default)
- int_19h 7y ago
  If I remember correctly, the granularity for this mechanism is pretty much arbitrary - i.e. you can have 1.2.3 and 1.2.4 installed side by side if you wanted to. From a practical perspective, if this means that the apps can start depending on 1.2.3 specifically, it requires the distro to package every minor version separately, which is very time- and space-consuming. With gcc and clang it's easier, because usually only the major versions get packaged side by side, and minor versions are simple upgrades.