[PLUG] running a mixed Debian system
Derek Loree
drl at drloree.com
Sat Nov 1 10:47:02 UTC 2003
On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 15:39, Carla Schroder wrote:
> Any particular issues with running a mixed stable/testing system? Or
> testing/unstable? Can the unwary user get sucked into Dependency Hell Slough,
> or does it generally work OK?
I've been thinking about this, and I would have to say, that in general
it will work OK. The Debian system is designed to build your
distribution from as many sources as you want. The majority of linux
developers create .deb's, and most can be added to your sources.list
without any problems. The usual problem is that a package will have a
dependency that can't be filled from the sources, and the fix is to find
a source that has the dependency.
As an example, earlier this week, I did a "Sarge" install. I did the
usual install a minimal Woody first, then change the sources.list to
point to Sarge instead of Stable, updated, then started installing
software. Evolution wouldn't install, it had an unmet dependency. When
I added "Stable" to the sources.list, the missing pieces were found and
Evolution was installed.
I think the problems occur when you start building software systems that
are dependent on specific versions of libraries. As an example, the
developer will create code that has work-arounds to bugs in the library,
and when the bugs get fixed (in the next release), the work-arounds will
break. This kind of defeats the purpose of the concept of "this package
depends on this library version foo or higher". Most of the time,
though, new versions of libraries will not lose functions, just gain
them.
I guess what I'm saying is that the problems of running mixed sources
are more developer problems, not user problems.
HTH,
Derek Loree
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