[gobolinux-users] Re: Compiling Glibc 2.3.6

[Sean E. Russell]

On Friday 12 May 2006 19:32, Carlo Calica wrote:
> On 5/11/06, Rafael Guterres Jeffman <rafael at tteng.com.br> wrote:
> > I vote that Glibc is only "updatable" when we release a new version of
> > the entire distro, and it should not be available as a Recipe on the
...
> That would fracture the packages available for each release.  I'm not
> sure if people are interested in keeping up with the upgrade cycle.
> This is similar to Fedora with their Core # releases.  I'd like to
> hear end-users opinions on this.

Ok.  I'm an end-user, and my opinion is that, no matter what, I don't want to 
upgrade something and have it make my computer entirely unusable, forcing me 
to go to some other computer, download and burn a rescue disk, and spend an 
afternoon trying to get my computer running again.

My *preferred* solution, as I've mentioned elsewhere, is some sort of magical 
mechanism by which I can have numerous versions of glibc and be (mostly) 
ignorant about what links to which version.  As a bonus, I'd like a "who 
uses" script that tells me that -- yes, there are still packages linking into 
glibc-X.Y, so I *can't* uninstall it without upgrading or breaking them.

Actually, that "who uses" script would be a good first step to protecting 
users from the glibc madness.  Put a call to it in the glibc recipe.  Then 
provide another script that does a sandboxed build to upgrade the toolchain, 
link it all in at once.

I can see a broader use for this.  Gentoo recently had a lot of problems with 
a libxml upgrade, which broke -- well, almost everything, but especially KDE.  
Because they lack a "who uses" script, and because KDE in Gentoo is broken up 
into a hundred ebuilds, the only recommended solution was a deep rebuild of 
your entire system.

That sucked.

> > The only reason I see for "forcing an update" is when a serious security
> > flaw is found on Glibc, otherwise, all one gets is marginal benefits for
> > too much trouble.
>
> Which keeps the upgrade choice in the distro-devs hands.  The end-user
> will also know which updates are critical and which aren't worth the
> risk.

Will they?  I've got some 693 packages installed on my Gentoo laptop, and I 
certainly don't keep track of most of them.  I was completely sidelined by 
the libxml issue, and was only saved from a glibc disaster by the pitiful 
cries of others who, too eagerly, ate from the forbidden fruit.

I think you're being optimistic about users being able to track the status, 
and significance, of upgrades for that many packages.  Furthermore, I'd argue 
that they shouldn't have to pay that much attention to it.  For many people, 
an OS is a tool, not a career or even a hobby.  Many of us don't want to 
spend hours each week trying to keep our OS running.

For the record, I *do* spend a lot of time dicking with my laptop, tweaking 
it, breaking it, and installing stuff.  But I have three other Linux boxes in 
the house, and those, I just want to be able to upgrade occasionally without 
a lot of pain or effort.  This aggravates the situation, because I do the 
upgrades rarely, so they're usually large, involving a lot of packages, and I 
don't do them all at once, so the nature of the upgrades changes for every 
system.

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