2 ms·

I feel the conflict between the good and bad here is interesting. First, it has to be acknowledged that the reason everything can be installed to separate dire

by taeric 5y ago

I feel the conflict between the good and bad here is interesting. First, it has to be acknowledged that the reason everything can be installed to separate directories is a modern luxury. Hard drive space used to be much more constrained. Second, everything being installed to a unique location is why everything has to be rebuilt. And gets into the fun that you can't update just part. The problem, then, is we never converged to foundational level software. That is, if we agreed that bash was a foundation of the system, there would just be the one. And you wouldn't get an odd web of versions of it linked everywhere. All code would just use bash. I'm assuming there has to be some level of this in the package management. That some software is foundational to the system, while some is convenience shared code for applications?

AceJohnny2 5y ago
> The problem, then, is we never converged to foundational level software. That is, if we agreed that bash was a foundation of the system, there would just be the one. And you wouldn't get an odd web of versions of it linked everywhere. All code would just use bash. I can't imagine how this would be possible, in practice. Software has fractal complexity, there are always things that need to be tweaked, unexpected interactions that need to be decided one way or the other (and changed back). I remember when Android decided to ship sqlite as part of the base OS, and everyone celebrated this robust, stable inclusion. And yet, sqlite continued to evolve, such that many Android apps nowadays just bundle their own version rather than use the OS's outdated version. Perhaps we're still in the early days of computing, and only just now starting to see a flattening of the S-curve of change (more likely, I've gotten older and "everything old is new again"), and now some kinds of "foundational" software can stabilize. But I note that there hasn't been a modern replacement of POSIX, and what POSIX defines is considered hopelessly outdated and limited.
- taeric 5y ago
  This can really only work if we accept that some things will not change. Only software I know that did this is TeX. And it was deliberate there. He acknowledged that done things could be improved. Or just done differently. But, he made the choice that it is a foundation for a lot of other code, so bug fixes only. Edit: I should say explicitly that I agree with you. And I am interested in how this can be solved otherwise.

by taeric 5y ago

AceJohnny2 5y ago

> The problem, then, is we never converged to foundational level software. That is, if we agreed that bash was a foundation of the system, there would just be the one. And you wouldn't get an odd web of versions of it linked everywhere. All code would just use bash. I can't imagine how this would be possible, in practice. Software has fractal complexity, there are always things that need to be tweaked, unexpected interactions that need to be decided one way or the other (and changed back). I remember when Android decided to ship sqlite as part of the base OS, and everyone celebrated this robust, stable inclusion. And yet, sqlite continued to evolve, such that many Android apps nowadays just bundle their own version rather than use the OS's outdated version. Perhaps we're still in the early days of computing, and only just now starting to see a flattening of the S-curve of change (more likely, I've gotten older and "everything old is new again"), and now some kinds of "foundational" software can stabilize. But I note that there hasn't been a modern replacement of POSIX, and what POSIX defines is considered hopelessly outdated and limited.

taeric 5y ago
This can really only work if we accept that some things will not change. Only software I know that did this is TeX. And it was deliberate there. He acknowledged that done things could be improved. Or just done differently. But, he made the choice that it is a foundation for a lot of other code, so bug fixes only. Edit: I should say explicitly that I agree with you. And I am interested in how this can be solved otherwise.