[olpc-software] Package manager stuff

[Mike Hearn]

On Tue, 2006-03-14 at 14:30 -0500, Alan Cox wrote:
> Nokia think otherwise, as do numerous other vendors.

Nokia may (or may not) have different requirements. 

> So you will be rewriting all the directory watching logic ?

You said that watches on union mounts were racy, but the union mount
wouldn't be watched itself. Physical directories would be. Unless the
problem is that any union mount anywhere in the system totally screws up
file monitoring, even of independent branches.

> Completely untrue. Its such a mess in Windows that its got a name. Its called
> "DLL hell"

DLL Hell is something like the blue screen of death: it's not been a
widespread problem for years. Modern application installers no longer
overwrite tons of system files, and Microsoft is much more careful about
ensuring versions of redistributables are backwards compatible than they
once were.

It's easily possible to install two or more Mozillas on Windows and
always has been. As is the case on the Mac also, which has never
suffered dll hell.

> Nice theory but it doesn't work. You can only get so close even with API
> versioning, especially if you don't have the manpower resources dedicated to
> the project and to fork each upstream project long term.

If the project can't commit to reliably versioning updates such that a
named interface corresponds with the behaviour an app expects then it's
not a platform. But I think it can make this commitment, especially as
many projects like GTK already do.

thanks -mike