[lug] glibc and yum update woes

[David L. Anselmi]

D. Stimits wrote:
[...]
> long as you don't get the devel stuff. I have no money for SuSE, debian 
> would be tempting if not for its slow adoption of things that really are 
> stable, mandrake is just a variation of redhat for the desktop, but I'd 
> pay money for a properly boxed set.

I keep running into people saying Debian is too slow to release.  Before 
you drink the kool-aid, let me share my experience.

I'd have to agree that stable gets way too out of date before it 
releases again.  So I run testing.  I upgrade to the latest packages 
about once a month (or sooner if I want to install something new).  I've 
always had things that are as current (sometimes more so) as Fedora's 
latest.  I don't have much instability or breakage when I upgrade.

By default, a package spends 10 days in unstable before it automatically 
moves to testing, unless there are critical bugs filed against it. 
Sometimes it takes longer while all the packages it depends on get new 
versions built and into testing but I never really notice that.  Once or 
twice over the years I've wanted something newer and I've installed 
unstable packages on my testing system.  That's worked fine and I can 
choose whether I want that package to stay on the unstable versions or 
automatically go back to testing when the package moves.

I do try to pay attention to my upgrades and don't just charge ahead 
when a selection I've made marks everything else for removal.  But 
that's pretty rare (and usually because I do something silly).

As a bonus, I get aptitude.  Anything installed due to dependencies is 
marked that way and removed when its dependents go away (they tell me 
RPM can do everything APT can but I'm still waiting to know how to do 
that one).  And I've never run into a package management conundrum like 
you've described with aptitude.  The size of the debian repository is 
another plus.

I even run testing on "production" machines.  That's at small 
installations where I can keep track of what I'm using and updates are 
important to me.  If I had a large installation and upgrading required 
long integration and testing cycles, I'd be happy to use stable and mix 
in testing where necessary.  But in those environments the developers 
don't get to use current software whether they complain or not.

You really should give Debian testing a try.  Based on what you've said 
I think you'll like it much more than you think.  And "etch" is a much 
cooler name than "core 4" ;-)

> Gentoo is fast, but I want to develop code to distribute, so I need
> popular distros, and gentoo still is nowhere near as popular as
> fedora/suse/debian/mandriva.

Why does your distro matter?  If you write useful code, it will get 
used.  If you manage to make it portable (and even more, autoconf'able) 
the packagers who put it on their distros will even say nice things 
about it while they use it.

Maybe I'm naive, but have you ever heard of BIND?  Runs great on Linux. 
  Where was it developed?  BSD (what's the B for?)  Ditto for DHCP3. 
Does Apache run on  Linux, BSD, Windows?  You bet.  Are you going to 
waste your time porting to Windows, or on writing cool apps and let the 
cygwin gurus port it?

Sorry, I just don't get why you think packaging past ./configure && make 
install is useful for an application developer.  Seems like you should 
use whatever helps you isolate your dependencies best so you can develop 
a repeatable build process.

Dave