How image installs work [was Re: The image question]

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Mar 10, 2007, at 8:42 AM, Yves de Champlain wrote:
>> The fact that API/ABI compatibility is frequently broken is an  
>> ugly little secret of our business and somebody, somewhere, always  
>> ends up dealing with it.   For fan-out reasons alone, that someone  
>> should be as far upstream as possible.
>
> Agree on that, who wants to do a clean reinstall of /opt/local  
> because libiconv was upgraded ?

because someone forced you to upgrade libiconv?

The image mode solution Jordan is proposing would let you upgrade  
libiconv without breaking anything, but you really wouldn't be  
upgrading libiconv (as everything you previously built against it  
would still be using the old version).

> Maybe the last check is useful as a hint for the maintainer at  
> best, but there are many things that could be checked and handled  
> directly.  Portfiles could include a flag for backward  
> incompatibilities.

... which assumes that the port maintainers are going to know  
whenever an API/ABI change occurs in their port (which I doubt is  
true for all ports - and I don't know of an automated way we can  
improve the macports infrastructure to really help here).

--
Daniel J. Luke
+========================================================+
| *---------------- dluke at geeklair.net ----------------* |
| *-------------- http://www.geeklair.net -------------* |
+========================================================+
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