On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 05:56:31PM -0700, Brendan Long wrote: > Why are you even using Arch? Because it allows me to get recent versions of apps, it doesn't force me to install a desktop I don't want, and some other reasons. > You sound like the kind of person who would want a > "stable" distro like Ubuntu or Debian. I ran away screaming from those. > Your changes sound like they would break the best > parts of Arch (updates and simple packages). They would not break anything at all. And in a sense, it's broken today: I use pacman to install app A depending on libfoo.so.1. Pacman knows about that dependency and install the lib as well. OK so far. Two weeks later I use again pacman to install app B that depends on libfoo.so.2 (as does everything in the repo by that time). Again pacman knows about the dependency and installs libfoo.so.2 But then: pacman knows that A is installed and depends on libfoo.so.1. But still it removes that library. Why ? I'd just say it fails to do its job, part of which is being aware of dependencies. As to the 'why', the reason is not that pacman doesn't have a choice. It has. The filenames for the new lib are different. The symlink from libfoo.so can be set to the new version - app A does not depend on that symlink. All other related files (man pages, etc.) can be updated as well, as app A does not depend on them. It only needs libfoo.so.1 pointing to the original library. I fully agree that I should update app A, and I would very probably do that quite soon (unless there are good reasons for not updating, which is possible). But is that a good reason to make app A break in the meantime ? Are there any good reasons for doing that except 'religious' ones ? Ciao, -- FA O tu, che porte, correndo si ? E guerra e morte !
