Why do we need modules at all? (2011)

Re:Why do we need modules at all? (2011) by grumbel on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @01:11PM (#20812078)

For one I think the example doesn't really fit, as Linux binaries are much closer to modules than they are to plain functions, as each of those binaries has numerous command line flags to change it's behavior quite radically. Functions as you encounter in a programming language are much simpler and more focused.

The other issue is that the approach is extremely inflexible, if you want to replace /usr/bin/program with a new version, everybody on the system is forced to use the new version, even if the new version might break stuff. Traditional `/usr/bin` doesn't provide a solution for this. You can of course work around that by using `/opt` or installing things in your home directory, but at that point you are just using the file system as namespace.

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Re:Why do we need modules at all? (2011) by ggg3 on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @10:26PM (#20816339)

very good point.

i think the solution to this problem (module or not) will be the same solution to the shared lib problem.

npm is a dumpster fire, but the larger projects are usually fine (the /bin equivalent). the worst problem is that every large project pull in different versions of whatever libs they wanted to use (which the singleton util lib proposed in the article would solve)

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