[TriLUG] package management pitfalls

[Brandon Van Every]

On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Igor Partola <igor at igorpartola.com> wrote:

> Brandon,
>
> Yes, these are all good points. That's why I mentioned homebrew and their
> package quality. I think the proliferation of PPA's in Ubuntu's corner of
> the world is getting close to the territory of "dangerous and unreliable".
>

Another "gotcha" is when your Ubuntu distro hits its 6 month new release
and you decide to update your OS.  Now you're on Quantal instead of
Precise.  It's an official release, it probably fixes some horrible kernel
bug you had on your HW, so why wouldn't you update?  You're not going to
leave your OS to sit around and rot for donkeys years, as you would in the
Windows world.

The official Ubuntu package repository will handle the transition just
fine; they're prepared.  Some of the more proactive PPAs will handle it,
because they thought to make a new Quantal section and build in their
repository.  Most PPAs won't.  Quantal, what's that?  That
"apt-add-repository blah, apt-get update, apt-get install packagename"
sequence you read about on some website somewhere fails miserably.  What's
your recourse?  (1) Learn all the gory details of configuring repositories
manually.  Although not outside the limits of a true techie's skill, it's
gore.  (2) Whimper.  Slither away from the consumer unfriendly Ubuntu OS.
 (3) Decide you really didn't need that piece of software after all.  (4)
Learn how to find, download, and install packages manually.  It contributes
to your "package paranoia," but it's easier than the full package learning
curve.

Does anyone else think that having a built-in systemic bias towards massive
amounts of OS version testing, and disruptions if you are a third party and
don't do that testing, coming down the pipe every 6 months, is insane?
 Cynically, you could say it awards Canonical a great deal of control over
the "free" (beer) open source ecology.  The small PPA provider will never
keep up.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every