Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

colinzhengj · 2008-07-14 01:54:07

Hi all,

I've been a loyal arch user for 1.5 years. Much as I've been pampered with Arch's ways to KISS, I do not appreciate certain aspect of Arch --- non-maintainability.

The problem comes from the fact that major versions of shared library are not independent packages. Naturally then newer versions overwrite the older ones by pacman.

Reason why I consider it a serious problem:
** I have a number of my own packages. I can't afford rebuilding one and each, every time a shared library used gets a new major version **

This is what makes me leave.

By definition, different major versions of shared libraries (.so) may be very much unrelated pieces of software (i.e. incompatible library interface), and to my belief, should be kept as independent packages. That is: gpm 2.0 should not replace gpm 1.0, or all custom packages using gpm 1.0 must be rebuilt.

We've already seen the package libstdc++5 in almost every distro...

There has to be a way for different major versions of shared library to coexist. If a recent Program X needs gpm 2.0, yet all my own packages were dynamically linked against gpm 1.0, it will be a nightmare --- either rebuild all, or you can't install Program X.

So I'd like to ask your opinions --- do you know of any distro, where each major version of a shared library is kept (in the repository) as a package on its own? That's the only way to minimize maintanence effort on the part of the user.

-----------------

I do realize that no major distro does this --- Debian for e.g. alleviates the problem of maintenance (on user's part) with a stable repository. To me this is a much compromised, partial solution.

Last edited by colinzhengj (2009-09-03 02:42:43)

lilsirecho · 2008-07-14 03:30:56

I have faunos in my computer (4GB ram) and run a discless live USB flash system.

Part of the system is a raid0 array of Compact Flash devices in SATA adapters with two 8GB CF cards.

I load the CF cards with pacman --cachedir data. With every upgrade by -Syuw.. I add the new packages to the cachedir raid0 as new items..the older versions remain in place. Thus, the flash device addresses new cells and overwrites do not occur. I can then install to ram any of the desired packages and use same for the session in use.
If desired, the package can be "saved" upon reboot. If an older package is needed for a given package for your select program, the desired packages can be grouped in a folder for installing as a special program by pacman.

This may be helpful in your situation since the older versions can be retained for your special purposes without affecting the normal upgrade process which in my situation is at my discretion from the cachedir during every session.

This procedure does not utilize /var/cache/pacman/pkg, hence, the size of the USB FLASH boot device is not affected by retaining downloaded tar gz packages with ....Syuw...(to permit retaining older versions).

The raid0 combo with SATA adapters has a read speed in hdparm of 84 MB/sec, thus access to install from cache is enhanced.

I find it works well for pacman and other items as well, not an exclusive pacman cache or "repo".

Allan · 2008-07-14 04:13:13

There is nothing stopping you having old libraries installed on your system. Just get the old package build and adjust it so it does not conflict with the current version.

I don't know of any distro that keeps old versions of libraries lying around. It seems to me you want a non-rolling distro so that you only have to deal with updates very irregularly.

colinzhengj · 2008-07-14 04:30:21

lilsirecho wrote:

I have faunos in my computer (4GB ram) and run a discless live USB flash system.
Part of the system is a raid0 array of Compact Flash devices in SATA adapters with two 8GB CF cards.
I load the CF cards with pacman --cachedir data. With every upgrade by -Syuw.. I add the new packages to the cachedir raid0 as new items..the older versions remain in place. Thus, the flash device addresses new cells and overwrites do not occur. I can then install to ram any of the desired packages and use same for the session in use.
If desired, the package can be "saved" upon reboot. If an older package is needed for a given package for your select program, the desired packages can be grouped in a folder for installing as a special program by pacman.
This may be helpful in your situation since the older versions can be retained for your special purposes without affecting the normal upgrade process which in my situation is at my discretion from the cachedir during every session.
This procedure does not utilize /var/cache/pacman/pkg, hence, the size of the USB FLASH boot device is not affected by retaining downloaded tar gz packages with ....Syuw...(to permit retaining older versions).
The raid0 combo with SATA adapters has a read speed in hdparm of 84 MB/sec, thus access to install from cache is enhanced.
I find it works well for pacman and other items as well, not an exclusive pacman cache or "repo".

Thanks for the suggestion. Although the old versions are retained, they can't coexist as packages parallel to the new version, if I interpreted your lines correctly.

colinzhengj · 2008-07-14 04:38:22

That's what I've been doing.
I've packaged the older versions (needed by one custom package or another) of shared library ABC, into ABC1, ABC2 ... so that pacman lets them coexist.
But one gets tired maintaining *his* own ever-growing directed acyclic network of packages.
In the extreme it is similar to having, side by side, an LFS with the user's own package management, and an up-to-date Arch.

Allan wrote:

There is nothing stopping you having old libraries installed on your system. Just get the old package build and adjust it so it does not conflict with the current version.
I don't know of any distro that keeps old versions of libraries lying around. It seems to me you want a non-rolling distro so that you only have to deal with updates very irregularly.

Last edited by colinzhengj (2008-07-14 04:42:23)

iBertus · 2008-07-14 08:07:32

Looks like you could just write a script to rebuild all of these packages automatically. You would still need to wait for the programs to build, but it would save a lot of effort otherwise.

JGC · 2008-07-14 09:32:31

Allan wrote:

There is nothing stopping you having old libraries installed on your system. Just get the old package build and adjust it so it does not conflict with the current version.
I don't know of any distro that keeps old versions of libraries lying around. It seems to me you want a non-rolling distro so that you only have to deal with updates very irregularly.

Debian keeps old ones around, but they have split lib/dev packages also, which makes these things easier to implement. What debian does is keeping the old package and renaming the new package. When no package in the distribution uses the old package for a while, it gets dropped from the distribution.

wuischke · 2008-07-14 11:44:19

Mh...mabybe Gobolinux or NixOS will do what you want.

matiit · 2008-07-14 12:07:45

Gentoo has a revdep-rebuild and with new portage has a preserved-rebuild,
It do exactly what you want.

catwell · 2008-07-14 15:18:05

Isn't HoldPkg what you want ?

Mr.Elendig · 2008-07-14 16:34:38

catwell wrote:

Isn't HoldPkg what you want ?

You are confusing HoldPkg with IgnorePkg

schivmeister · 2008-07-14 17:05:15

HoldPkg is sort of a cautionary; confirmation before removal eg. updates.

Nope..he still wants updates. I see it as counter-rolling so yeah, there are needs the Arch design cannot satisfy. You're keeping custom packages, it's your issue, you're bound to rebuild them and spare time for the maintenance headaches. Since you want to refrain from rebuilds, best bet would be Debian

catwell · 2008-07-14 19:41:22

Mr.Elendig wrote:

catwell wrote:
Isn't HoldPkg what you want ?
You are confusing HoldPkg with IgnorePkg

Indeed.

Agent69 · 2008-07-21 18:14:52

I'm sure this is a stupid question, but couldn't a static compilation fix the problem for the original poster?

colinzhengj · 2008-07-22 04:26:45

To Agent69: That defeats the purpose of dynamic linkage doesn't it? Multiple copies of the same binary in memory and disk isn't too economical.

preserved-rebuild seems to solve the problem of DLL hell, but unfortunately gentoo's complex, automated /etc structure must turn me away...

Following wuischke's suggestion, I tried NixOS and GoboLinux. With GoboLinux it is perfectly possible to have multiple versions of libraries and even programs (you make a "current" symlink to change to a particular program version). However I could hardly appreciate the rest of the system, where the directory layout differs from the typical layout to an unnecessary degree (they even have a kernel module to accomplish the new layout). NixOS appears to have to few packages and with too small a community.

There are a couple other package managers that would also solve the problem e.g. GNU stow and ZeroInstall. But none of them has a central, community mantained repository.

Last edited by colinzhengj (2008-07-22 04:30:18)

colinzhengj · 2008-07-22 04:42:03

By the way I'm now using CRUX.
Another reason I leave Arch is that the package quality is as good no longer.
*Why the hell* must Vim depend on Ruby and Python??? (http://www.archlinux.org/packages/5786/)
Arch no longer KISSes as it KISSed before. Of course it may be the right direction to go to attract a larger crowd, by not KISSing as it did before, and at the cost of losing those who liked the degree to which it KISSed.

In CRUX the problem of DLL hell remains. The ports repository is smaller, but whatever in there are well maintained. Also it is possible to install Arch's binary packages in CRUX.

Last edited by colinzhengj (2008-07-22 04:50:08)

dolby · 2008-07-22 06:00:05

colinzhengj wrote:

By the way I'm now using CRUX.
Another reason I leave Arch is that the package quality is as good no longer.
*Why the hell* must Vim depend on Ruby and Python??? (http://www.archlinux.org/packages/5786/)
Arch no longer KISSes as it KISSed before. Of course it may be the right direction to go to attract a larger crowd, by not KISSing as it did before, and at the cost of losing those who liked the degree to which it KISSed.
In CRUX the problem of DLL hell remains. The ports repository is smaller, but whatever in there are well maintained. Also it is possible to install Arch's binary packages in CRUX.

Even though i cant judge you for going with CRUX, as i respect it very much AFAIK CRUX only provides a very basic (tiny indeed) version of vim. It would be equivalent to the Archlinux vi package, which BTW is even less tiny than CRUX's vim.
As for the rest, they have been discussed in the past many times. People make choices and their choices should be respected.
Good luck.

schivmeister · 2008-07-22 06:32:46

To understand "why the hell", you'd need to understand packaging. There's a reason why an x package needs to depend on y, even if you could omit y during build-time. Binary packages are usually built as all-in-one, so it's only ethical that the package speaks the truth and demands for y because it was built with a specific feature of it or has a file that references it. However, in this case, Vim by default (read: vanilla) may require/recommend them as can be seen by a source-based distro's buildscript: http://gentoo-portage.com/app-editors/vim

http://www.builderau.com.au/program/pyt … 181,00.htm

If they're optional but have to be opted in during compilation - and they're useful and possibly warranted by the majority, they have to be included. Lighter distributions like CRUX do not have this responsibility, their users can recompile if they need another feature or two as long as there's no significant demand.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/vi … s/vim.html

But yes, CRUX is a good choice, at least for your requirements.

Last edited by schivmeister (2008-07-22 06:36:49)

dsr · 2008-07-27 17:29:54

Has CRUX solved your problem? I know you said that you didn't want a point release distro like Debian Stable, but what's the reason? It seems the rolling release system introduces way more headaches for you than it's worth.

By the way, 你的英文很好。你学英文学了多久？

jcolinzheng · 2009-09-03 03:19:47

Just want to say that I have come back. After over one year of CRUX. CRUX does not solve the problem, and its inconveniences have grown to an intolerable degree as my usage pattern changed (matured, hopefully) over time.

But this time, I have set up some automated procedure to tackle DLL hell, ie to re-install (by renaming) the library package that got removed due to upgrading to a higher major version. The renaming makes it necessary to change the dependancy info of the existing application (those I want to keep without rebuilding) that must still rely on the older version of the library; fortunately this can be done without rebuilding.

To me a point release system such as Debian solves the DLL hell problem only partially. There are times when the required version of some library even predates the version in Debian Stable.

No distro really stores the full history (ie major versions) of each library. In CRUX it's just a bit easier to build one's own package of the early version missing from the repo. I think I moved to CRUX mostly because of other reasons. Such as less cutting edge but more fulgal, minimalist packages. Anyway, I will not look back at CRUX any more.

Last edited by jcolinzheng (2009-09-03 03:42:27)

fukawi2 · 2009-09-03 03:42:33

They always come back.. Welcome back

andre.ramaciotti · 2009-09-03 14:09:37

Welcome back.

Have you tried using GoboLinux? Apparently it does what you want: it keeps older versions of libraries (and packages). If I were to go with a source-based distro, I'd probably go with it.

jcolinzheng · 2009-09-03 14:46:30

Thanks guys. I have tried GoboLinux (see reply #15).
A distro allowing parallel major versions of libraries (like GoboLinux and NixOS) with sane directory layout (unlike GoboLinux), combined with a rolling-release binary repository, would be ideal. Unfortunately no such combination exists today.

.:B:. · 2009-09-03 17:14:13

Jcolinzheng: mind asking why do you have two nicks?

jcolinzheng · 2009-09-03 19:40:58

Hi B, becase I forgot my password to the other account a year ago...I have managed to remember it now, though

Arch Linux

#1 2008-07-14 01:54:07

Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#2 2008-07-14 03:30:56

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#3 2008-07-14 04:13:13

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#4 2008-07-14 04:30:21

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#5 2008-07-14 04:38:22

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#6 2008-07-14 08:07:32

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#7 2008-07-14 09:32:31

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#8 2008-07-14 11:44:19

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#9 2008-07-14 12:07:45

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#10 2008-07-14 15:18:05

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#11 2008-07-14 16:34:38

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#12 2008-07-14 17:05:15

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#13 2008-07-14 19:41:22

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#14 2008-07-21 18:14:52

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#15 2008-07-22 04:26:45

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#16 2008-07-22 04:42:03

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#17 2008-07-22 06:00:05

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#18 2008-07-22 06:32:46

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#19 2008-07-27 17:29:54

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#20 2009-09-03 03:19:47

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#21 2009-09-03 03:42:33

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#22 2009-09-03 14:09:37

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#23 2009-09-03 14:46:30

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#24 2009-09-03 17:14:13

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

#25 2009-09-03 19:40:58

Re: Planning to leave Arch and looking for a distro..(Update: came back..)

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