[ILUG-BOM] We don't need no dependencies

[Yogesh Ginde]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Nikhil Joshi wrote:

> Linux is so well organized in other ways then why this irrational
> dependency thing . Why can't developers make standalone software ?

I think this was discussed on LWN or Slashdot a while back ("Shared
dependencies hell") with respect to GnuCash. Making standalone software
would probably mean using bloated statically linked executables. That's
generally not a good thing (e.g compare the size of the statically linked
version of Opera 5.0 with the dynamically linked one).

I have also found that you can sometimes get away with using lower version
dependencies than those actually specified if you compile the source
yourself, though you may need to do a bit of tweaking. Binary packages
seem to be built on bleeding edge systems and thus the need for the latest
versions of the dependencies. No real solution here. The Linux development
model demands that you release early and release often.

-YoGeSh