how is rolling release possible?

machinecrusade · 2011-03-12 06:42:22

how do you maintain a rolling release that rolls this fast? Allow me to clarify with a hypothetical example:

i am running my favorite text based rpg called 'foo-1.0', it depends on lib-foo-1. i also play bar-1.0, which depends on lib-bar-1, and lib-foo-1.
bar 1.0 is pretty cool and its under heavy development... eventually bar 2.0 is released. yay! bar-2.0 comes with a new lib called lib-bar-2, but still depends the old lib-foo-1.

all of a sudden foo gets upgraded to foo-2.0, lib-foo also bumps up to lib-foo-2.0. is bar broken now? how do the arch devs keep up with all this?
is it up to the package maintainer to regularly check for new versions and hold them back if there is some kind of software conflict? is it up to him to make it work?

maybe all it takes to fix the broken "bar-2.0", is point the old lib-foo-1 at lib-foo-2, who would do that?

i am a little bewildered by the development of arch linux. i have used every distro under the sun, they all suck. except arch. arch has also turned out to be very stable for me, i run a full desktop, xfce, multimedia, stuff from the aur, how does it not break ?

could someone maybe explain this to me, or point me the appropriate wikki page

Last edited by machinecrusade (2011-03-12 06:42:58)

Allan · 2011-03-12 07:35:38

When we build a package update and see there is an soname bump in a library, we use a special repo for recompiling all the software the needs the old library version to make it use the new one.

For example, an update of libpng or libjpeg with a library soname change requires us to rebuild ~400 other packages in the repos too.

ngoonee · 2011-03-12 13:50:27

Check out the archives of [arch-dev-public] to see the devs discuss rebuilds, its a lot of work even for the smaller libs (libjpg/libpng was a killer).

machinecrusade · 2011-03-13 05:43:57

i quickly clicked through a few posts at arch-dev-public and would like to extend my thanks to everybody involved in this project. the development is just as transparent as the system. amazing. i noticed a lot of names over and over again, these are highly skilled people putting massive amounts of time into this project. again, thank you.

hitest · 2011-03-26 06:30:44

I run one Arch box and several Slackware-current boxes. The key to running, maintaining a cutting edge distro is to read the advisories that are posted. If there are gotchas they are usually reported and noted.

cesura · 2011-03-26 20:24:06

Because I just found this thread today, I would like to quickly expand on what Allan had said, using a screenshot from the development page of the latest raptor/rasqal/redland rebuild:

That's a rather simple one, but I think the way that the rebuild system is setup is very intuitive.

hardywu · 2011-04-08 23:33:25

As a new user of linux system, I noticed that "pacman" check the package dependences each time I want to remove a package.
So what would happen if there are packages

A, B and C such that A depends on B , B depends on C and C depends on A? They form a loop like
A <-B <-C <-A <-B .....

Does that means I will never be able to delete any of A, B and C unelse I format the disk ?

ngoonee · 2011-04-09 00:46:17

hardywu wrote:

As a new user of linux system, I noticed that "pacman" check the package dependences each time I want to remove a package.
So what would happen if there are packages
A, B and C such that A depends on B , B depends on C and C depends on A? They form a loop like
A <-B <-C <-A <-B .....
Does that means I will never be able to delete any of A, B and C unelse I format the disk ?

That would not happen. In any case there's an option to remove ignoring dependencies.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-03-12 06:42:22

how is rolling release possible?

#2 2011-03-12 07:35:38

Re: how is rolling release possible?

#3 2011-03-12 13:50:27

Re: how is rolling release possible?

#4 2011-03-13 05:43:57

Re: how is rolling release possible?

#5 2011-03-26 06:30:44

Re: how is rolling release possible?

#6 2011-03-26 20:24:06

Re: how is rolling release possible?

#7 2011-04-08 23:33:25

Re: how is rolling release possible?

#8 2011-04-09 00:46:17

Re: how is rolling release possible?

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