Jakub Jirutka 🇪🇺🇺🇦
If #xz were a Go or Rust dependency, you wouldn’t have a single copy of xz library on your system, but many, #xzbackdoor hidden in every executable that uses it. Distros would have to rebuild all packages using that lib (not just the lib itself), which could take days or weeks, and users would have to update them all, downloading tens or hundreds of megabytes.
If you install binaries directly from vendors/devs, it’s even worse – you wouldn’t even know which ones are affected and you’d (1/3)
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
Jakub Jirutka 🇪🇺🇺🇦
libraries it’s linked with!
Now do you see the value of #Linux distros and dynamic linking? Please, stop this insane “single binary” mantra and work with distros, not against them.
If #rustlang wants to replace C, devs need to acknowledge this and start providing dynamically linkable libraries with stable ABI. (3/3)
Jakub Jirutka 🇪🇺🇺🇦
be at the mercy of the devs to provide the update. Not a group of active maintainers behind the distro, but many individual devs, some of whom lack the time or motivation and sustainability. The same goes for Docker containers, Flatpak and similar!
This is called static linking or bundling. Instead of rebuilding and updating a single shared library, you have to rebuild and update every single thing that links/bundles it. In the case of static linking, you usually can’t even tell which (2/3)
Aleksandra Fedorova :fedora:
Upstreams should not choose versions of dependencies randomly in their own bubble.
To make deduplication of effort work, there should be awareness in every upstream that they need to align their choices with other upstreams.
The packaging and distributions ecosystem is where different upstreams meet and talk to each other about things like which versions to choose as a base for LTS branches, which versions to choose for shared libraries and so on.
Aleksandra Fedorova :fedora:
And I may be need a separate statement:
I don't believe that every upstream developer must become a packaging expert.
I believe that packaging is a job on its own. For some projects you combine roles of developer, tester, doc writer and packager, for some you just can't. And then you ask for help.
But I believe that upstream developer should be aware that there are needs in software development beyond writing the code and pleasing the user.
ITwrx
kravietz 🦇
Significant share of these “unable to address” are caused by physical impossibility of resolving conflicts between what specific versions of libraries specific applications require. In the Python world, every single library<X.Y constraint in requirements.txt is another piece of motivation for projects such as pipx which do for Python apps what Docker does for the whole system. And I guess unless there’s some kind of Central Committee to decide and enforce on library versions for all applications, we just need to live with these workarounds.
ITwrx
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