Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Re: community spirit

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Matthew" == Matthew Palmer <address@hidden> writes:

    Matthew> On Mon, Nov 01, 2004 at 08:41:50PM +0100, Jacob Gorm
    Matthew> Hansen wrote:

    >> The problem with apt-get and similar easy-to-use tools is that
    >> programmers just specifify all sorts of dependencies, instead
    >> of putting in a tiny extra effort to make their software stand
    >> alone.

They don't "just" specify dependencies; they are strongly _encouraged_
to do that in order to ensure that standard parts are used where
possible.  Sure, it's a tiny extra effort to make your software stand
alone, but then it really does stand alone.  For pretty much the same
reasons that a smoker in an elevator stands alone: he's polluting the
public space.  It's a huge extra effort to conform to relevant
standards and test with "industry standard" components that don't have
written specifications in a standalone app.  Note that this is exactly
why Arch has a list of required software with versions that's about 25
items long, not to mention hackerlab itself.  Of course today on POSIX
systems only a few of them are problematic, but they're exactly the
fail-fatally apps: tar, diff, patch.  The bugs in some versions of
these that matter destroy data in the archive.

So if you want lots of features, you will have lots of dependencies.
The problem is that the availability and ease of use of standard parts
encourages people to include YAGNIs, which is something that Tom is
very good at avoiding.  But that's more a property of Tom's design
sense than the extra effort he makes to make things standalone, IMO.

    >> Look at how much easier installing software is on Windows
    >> versus on Linux.

Look at how often you have to reinstall the whole system and all your
apps to resolve DLL conflicts on Windows.  I don't call an install
that often means reinstalling the whole system "easy".

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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