Les Mikesell wrote:
Tom Horsley wrote:
Why not just give up on any Linux install being compatible with any
other and compile everything statically instead
We tried that, and redhat has managed to produce a libc in which
it is actually impossible to statically link a working
program. All sorts of routines (pam related things like getpwuid
for one example) drag in libraries dynamically, and when they do
that in a static program, you then find you've managed to load
two conflicting copies of malloc (or something equally destructive).
Anyway, If I wanted to recompile everything to get it working,
I'd just switch to gentoo, I was merely brainstorming the idea
of a linux where you could run any program from any distro :-).
I didn't mean _you_ would recompile everything. I was suggesting that
everything which is not compiled against the stock libs (as in the stuff
from alternate repos) would all be statically compiled so as to not
break when the stock versions do their frequent incompatible updates -
and a side effect would be to not introduce alternate/incompatible
libraries. When a library changed in such a repo, I'd expect the repo
versions to be recompiled. The only effect on the user side would be
larger updates in the cases where multiple applications use same libs.
The issue is related to how up to date the various repos are working. I
have ran into this over the years. Repo X works with version 2.0.1
while Repo Y is now using 2.0.2. Now you come into problems.
Isn't this the idea behind rpmforge?
http://rpmforge.net/manifest.php
1. Goal
The RPMforge.net project is an independent community-driven project to
provide the infrastructure and tools to allow users, developers and
packagers to meet and work together to provide and improve RPM packages.
I would also like to see the Linux Standards Base model followed.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/LSB
Part of the issue is where software will be installed and how it is
handled within the OS.
Common configuration file locations and setup.
--
Robin Laing
