On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 12:46:53PM +0100, David Leverton wrote:
> This has been pointed
> out ever since the issue was first discussed, but some people like to
> stick their fingers in their ears and dismiss legitimate technical
> arguments as "trolling" and "politics".

The issue is some folk are trying to be pragmatic, and some folk are 
sticking to "it's not the proper long term solution thus don't do it 
at all".

The question shouldn't be "is it long term the right or wrong 
solution", the question should be "yes it's not perfect, but what is 
the gain of deploying it?"

Literally, do we break more by deploying it then we gain?  Is the 
reduction in intermediate broken packages (and general linkage 
whonkyness) being mostly sorted worth the cost of some cranky packages 
breaking from it?

That is the question.  If the only correct answer is "it must be the 
right technical solution always" we'd theoretically be running hurd 
rather than linux after all, nor would the prefix project be in wide 
usage.

Alternatively rather than arguing, someone needs to go out and get 
some data to back this change (and/or back the stance it causes more 
damage than it's worth).

Personally, I've been running as-needed for a while- while not a fan 
of it, it's been an overall plus for my usage.  The question is if 
it's an overall gain to deploy globally (iirc fedora/ubuntu are 
running this way now).

~harring