From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: util-linux-owner@vger.kernel.org Received: from ishtar.tlinx.org ([173.164.175.65]:55796 "EHLO Ishtar.hs.tlinx.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752831AbaHMR0H (ORCPT ); Wed, 13 Aug 2014 13:26:07 -0400 Message-ID: <53EB9F9F.3020201@tlinx.org> Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 10:25:51 -0700 From: Linda Walsh MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Stanislav Brabec CC: Karel Zak , util-linux@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: util-linux and distro bootstrap, dependencies and build cycles References: <1407768431.5984.23.camel@oct.suse.cz> <20140812093955.GL17719@x2.net.home> <1407874536.5984.80.camel@oct.suse.cz> <20140813101736.GO17719@x2.net.home> <1407941620.5984.134.camel@oct.suse.cz> In-Reply-To: <1407941620.5984.134.camel@oct.suse.cz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Sender: util-linux-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Stanislav Brabec wrote: > Only base system changes (gcc, binutils, bash, util-linux,...) trigger > whole distro to rebuild. Updates of high level packages triggers only > dependent package. > > This prevents any binary incompatibility when releasing rolling update > with a new library. > ---- There are other ways of dealing with binary compatibility. As it is, if you want to update perl, python, ruby for example, you need to rebuild the entire system. Even vim/Gvim has dependencies on systemd because it supplies config files that systemd uses. But worse, if you update perl/python or ruby, you can no longer edit. It has been pointed to suse, multiple times, that they could build most of their utils with less hard-coded dependencies (like have gvim dynamically load script engines at run time on demand, when needed rather than having to load all of them at load time in order for gvim to run. Even when no binary dependencies are present, hard-coding versions and labels into each of the binaries to only work with recognized components guarantees failure on opensuse systems. I have pushed for having a more robust system, but the current mantra is "break everything" if the user changes anything ....