(no subject)

[maradydd]

In other news, Debian continues to be annoying in my sight. I have a marked dislike for distributions which think they know how to package software better than the people who wrote it in the first place <coughFedoracough>, which is one of the things I appreciate about Gentoo: emerge manages dependencies, potential stability problems, and installation locations, and generally speaking, that's about it. What, I ask you, is the purpose behind providing a library and not providing its header file? Yes, yes, I know I get the attendant header from the -dev package for the app in question, but that's not the point.

Infidels. They will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

This is probably not the attitude the department wants me grading final exams with, but I have to keep myself amused somehow.

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

What, I ask you, is the purpose behind providing a library and not providing its header file?

The library package alone is so that software requiring the library runs. The dev package is for compiling the software. It makes perfect sense once you're used to it. If you need to compile, dev, if you just need to run something just get the library. Generally speaking you wouldn't normally install a library package it would be a dragged in install from some bit of software that you really wanted.

[I love debian and ubuntu -- they've made my life so much easier.]

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the header is, you know, a few k, that's it. If you want to write software that links against the library, you don't need all the source, you just need the library and the header. Maybe this adds up if you have a thousand libraries, but even that wouldn't add up to more than a few MB.

When I think of a dev package I think of doing dev on that package, not dev with that package.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the header is, you know, a few k, that's it.

Well, I guess you could argue that non-developer people should have the header files installed as well by default but I honestly don't see the point when it's only three extra characters to get the -dev version. I very rarely need the -dev version of a package.

If you want to write software that links against the library, you don't need all the source, you just need the library and the header.

That's what the -dev package will install in any case I know of.

When I think of a dev package I think of doing dev on that package, not dev with that package.

Ah... no, that's not the debian model. The -dev pacakge is for developing things USING that package. If you wish to develop the package itself you would want the -src package (actually, you would probably want the latest CVS version but that's another matter).

[doissetep.livejournal.com]

Odd that you should mention that. An issue of Wired from September 2047 that fell backwards in time through a wormhole refered to the distributors of Debian as:

"Infidels. They were the first against the wall when the revolution came."