Thank you, Ubuntu

Re:Thank you, Ubuntu by IgorPartola on Saturday October 02, 2010 @02:43PM (#1751060)

What do you propose instead? So far package management solves these problems for me:

  1. Upgrading the entire OS at once.
  2. Easy updates.
  3. Almost never having any issues with incompatible software. When issues arise I can easily roll things back or wait until they are fixed.
  4. Never having to hunt for software on the web.
  5. Ability to script server/workstation deploys.
  6. Never having to spend more than 5 minutes on maintaining my workstation.

That last point is huge. How long would it take you to update Java, Flash Player, Adobe Reader, IE and install SP# on Windows?

If there is an alternative way of approaching it I'd be very happy, since it can only be an improvement upon already stellar apt/yum/BSD ports, etc.

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Re:Thank you, Ubuntu by Gormo on Saturday October 02, 2010 @03:04PM (#1751100)

I'm only speaking to the dependency-resolution function that makes package management necessary on certain OSes. Public application repositories sharing a standard interface still have some nice features.

But if the applications are all statically-linked, I don't have to worry about dependency conflicts, and some things are a lot simpler, e.g. copying the binaries off to a flash drive to take them to another system, or running two different versions of the same software simultaneously.

On Windows, I don't usually even run installers anymotre; I extract the installers, collect all of the dlls into the application directory, and compress everything with UPX. Once the program is running out of a self-contained directory, I can run it off a thumbdrive, copy it to my Dropbox, etc. Plus I have the option of not updating software when I prefer not to.

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Re:Thank you, Ubuntu by IgorPartola on Saturday October 02, 2010 @03:32PM (#1751160)

I don't really see how your approach to installing Windows applications can scale. Also, pinning will allow you to hold back any packages you'd like.

The only potential problem I see is statically-linked applications issue. However, I think in the case where libraries are open and shared amongst many applications/other libraries, it makes no sense to use static linking. Its advantages are that you don't need to worry about dependencies but that "is a solution to a problem that doesn't need to exist in the first place" since package management takes care of these issues.

IMHO it's better to spend 30 minutes once a year resolving an issue that arose when a Debian/Ubuntu repository got screwed up for a short period of time, than to constantly try to solve the problem of managing software installation/upgrades.

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Re:Thank you, Ubuntu by vog on Sunday October 03, 2010 @05:37AM (#1752426)

Under Windows and OSX, statically-linked or self-contained packages are indeed the only way to stay sane when deploying an application.

However, this comes at a price: You'll always have to provide a newer version of the application whenever a serious issue is fixed in one of your dependency libraries. This means extra work for you. Also, you'll have to take care of an auto-upgrade mechanism.

On systems with a package manager, you'll only have to provide updates if you fix an issue in the application itself. You also don't have to write an auto-upgrade mechanism. Just upload a new package to your server.

However, if you don't care that much about users' security, statically linking is indeed a lot less work than using a package manager.

(FWIW, I'm the maintainer of Mingw-cross-env (http://mingw-cross-env.nongnu.org/). This is a project that provides a cross-build toolchain for statically linked Windows applications. It builds a cross compiler and lots of free software libraries. We have that kind of discussion from time to time on our mailing list.)

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