Re: Build a portable linux binary?

[John W. Eaton]

On 2/22/19 11:33 AM, Przemek Klosowski wrote:

> (*) THis is a serious problem that you mention: old distros sometimes 
> prevent the use of new packages. At the same time, I am perplexed and 
> frustrated when people insist  on simultaneously using some obsolete 
> base OS and the newest version of enduser software like Octave

Yes, I have the same reaction.

People who want to do this are expecting a package like Octave to be 
absolutely up to date while also either requiring it to build on and 
work around problems in an old OS or ship in binary form with updated 
packages that can also run on the old OS.  This approach pushes the 
massive task of tracking updates for, building, and packaging all 
dependencies from Octave down to libc.  This is obviously no easy task. 
My best attempt is what became the "native" build option for mxe-octave 
and in the end it was a tremendous amount of effort and it doesn't work 
particularly well.

Other options like flatpak seem promising, but then if your old OS is 
old enough, flatpak isn't supported.  And, whether the solution is 
docker, flatpak, or a VM, it all seems to me to come down to some 
solution to run what is essentially an updated set of packages or 
updated OS inside a VM/container/whatever on your obsolete OS?  All for 
what?  To avoid updating the OS?

jwe