On Friday 22 October 2004 17:07, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> On Thursday 21 October 2004 21:19, Luke-Jr wrote:
> > On Thursday 21 October 2004 7:00 pm, Nathaniel McCallum wrote:
> > > These problems (as rac mentions) can somewhat be overcome by freezing
> > > the toolchain or (as rac doesn't really mention) freezing the whole
> > > tree.  I know freezing the tree has been mentioned as an "enterprise"
> > > type option (having a supported tree with backported security fixes),
> > > though it would help with desktop binary compatibility as well.
> >
> > Or simply by updating the RDEPEND in the binary pkg to lock it to
> > specific versions of packages. The problem then would be figuring out
> > which packages are binary compatible and *not* locking those.
>
> Unfortunately the requirements for RDEPEND in a binary package are more in
> the like of depend on library L with useflags A, B and C, and linked
> against the libraries with sonames X, Y and Z. And even for those sonames
> you would want a minimal version. In short dll hell revisited.

Portage really needs to know this anyway to be able to sort out possible 
breakage when things are upgraded. Sure, everything can be scanned but that 
is very time-consuming and thus a PITA for the end-user.

Remember that the packages, once installed, are always binary and any change 
to versions are just as likely to cause breakage within the installed system 
regardless of how the new packages are installed.

Regards,
Jason Stubbs

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