On Sat, Aug 02, 2014 at 12:26:06PM +0200, Gustav Fransson Nyvell wrote: > Hi, there, > > I wanted to run something by you, mkay. About package management. I wonder > if this has been shouted at already. I remember from SunOS that packages are > installed in a different manner than let's say Red Hat and of course > OpenBSD. They install it in the form /pkgs/PROGRAM/VERSION, example > /pkgs/gimp/1.0. GoboLinux does this. I think this has some advantages over > installing /usr/local/bin/gimp1.1 and /usr/local/bin/gimp2.0. What do you > think? What have you said? > > Ready to be shouted at;
This puts more strain on the file system actually, which is probably the main reason we don't do it. Also, there is generally a lot of churning to do to make the package self-contained. As far as policy goes, having stuff set up like that looks more flexible, but it is a fallacy. Instead of having the distribution solve issues concerning incompatible versions and updates, the toll falls instead on the individual sysadmin, to make sure things they have work together. It can lead to security nightmares, because it's "so simple" to have the newer version alongside the old version that sticky points of updating take much longer to resolve. It's a bit like having mitigation measures that you can turn on and off... if it's possible to turn these off, there's not enough incentive to actually fix issues. Likewise for packages. By making it somewhat LESS convenient to install several versions of the same piece of software, we make it more important to do timely updates. Also, we don't have the manpower to properly manage lots of distinct versions of the same software. So this kind of setup would be detrimental to actually testing stuff.
