> install packages for a single user
because of the security angle, Not allowing this:
> install multiple versions of the same package
is completely indefensible.
Who are you, package manager, to decide that I shouldn't be able to use different versions of the same package? Do you know more about my context than I do?
That's one of main point of a distribution, rather that simply throwing software on a hard drive.
The maintainers have to work hard to guarantee that a specific set of packages and version work well together. Well enough for most users to deploy 99% of the packages without surprises.
And then backport security updates (often faster than upstream), for 3 years, often 5.
And various companies provide longer term updates and maintenance.
Oh, and provide license checking and vetting.
Turns out that it's a lot of work and no serious distribution would consider supporting multiple version of packages while guaranteeing the same level of quality.
> Do you know more about my context than I do?
Given your statements about distributions... most likely yes.
Hello there, ad hominem.
Linux distributions are overreaching. They should offer those services for core software. I should be able to install Inkscape 0.91 and 0.92 at the same time, easily.
* compartmentalized side-effects (not per-user even -
users might decide they want multiple compartments for
different apps) and
* a shared storage area for all the packages and their
versions (i.e. Nix)I'm sad that this is not happening since in the process we're also losing the good bits of system package managers as per this article.
Not at all. The large majority of packaging systems have reasonable and similar requirements for upstreams, like not bundling dependencies or not hardcoding paths.
> fundamentally not very good, having very limited ability to do things like install packages for a single user or install multiple versions of the same package
That's completely by design, and for good reasons.