

Over time, Linux package dependencies show predator/prey relationship - codelion
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/11/over-time-linux-package-dependencies-show-predatorprey-relationship.ars?comments=1#comments-bar
I linked to the comemnts by mistake, the link for the post is at 
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/11/over-time-linux-package-dependencies-show-predatorprey-relationship.ars
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jiggy2011
I have a Love/Hate relationship with Debian/Ubuntu packages. 99% of the time
it works swimmingly and is superior to any other way of installing software.

Then you get a problem where you try to install something really simple like
the jdee extension for emacs and you get this:

Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This
may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using
the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been
created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to
resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies. jde : Depends: cedet-contrib
(>= 1:1.0pre4-2) but it is not installable Depends: cogre (>= 1:1.0pre4-2) but
it is not installable Depends: eieio (>= 1:1.0pre4-2) but it is not
installable Depends: semantic (>= 1:1.0pre4-2) but it is not installable
Depends: speedbar (>= 1:1.0pre4-2) but it is not installable Recommends: ecb
but it is not going to be installed E: Broken packages

 _Wow_ great, what the hell are these packages and why the hell are they not
installable? It gives me absolutely no clues whatsoever so your only options
are:

A) Google the error and hope that somebody has exactly the same problem with
exactly the same version of the distro you are using.

B) Try and compile everything from source which about 50% of the time will
generate even more cryptic error messages or ask you questions you have no
idea of the answer to like asking for the locations of obscure libraries _and_
even when it does work,it will take the software outside the cozy world of
apt-get management and may require you to install different versions of
dependency libraries all over your home folder.

C) Completely give up on the idea of installing that software.

incidentally if anyone has a solution to this particular problem with jdee I'd
love to know :)

I don't understand how these conflicts come into existence in the first place,
surely if two programs require different versions of the same library to run
it should be possible to somehow install both versions and link each program
to a different one?

~~~
parfe
Jdee is a pile of garbage which made me quit emacs twice before finally
ignoring the package altogether on my third (successful) attempt to switch.
While other deb packages exhibit the same symptoms from time to time, jdee
specifically doesn't surprise me. JDEE has the midas touch but instead of gold
you get shit. I feel pity for the debian package maintainer attempting to
salvage such a horrible mess of code.

I didn't realize how angry JDEE made me. Two years passed since I tried to use
it and that package can still bring out some latent rage.

~~~
jiggy2011
Is it a pile of garbage because it is hard to install , or because it isn't
very useful?

Is it worse than say eclipse?

~~~
parfe
I never had a fully functional install of JDEE, so I won't compare it to
eclipse. Configuring JDEE itself gave me nightmares. From what I remember, I
would set variables to the proper VM and experience no change. At the time I
gave up on JDEE I had the opportunity to switch to Python and I never looked
back at Java.

I think JDEE suffers from being too large with too many dependencies. Emacs
configurations make almost every install unique and I think the maintainers of
emacs projects in general have a hard time supporting users because people
generally stop writing documentation when "It works for me." The same way you
find your keys in the last place you look.

For instance <http://jdee.sourceforge.net/install.html>

_Download the latest versions of Eric Ludlam's speedbar, eieio, and semantic
bovinator packages and install them on your system, each in their own
directory.

You can download these packages from SourceForge.

Note Emacs and XEmacs include earlier versions of speedbar that are
incompatible with the JDEE. You must delete the earlier version or ensure that
it is not on the Emacs load path. Otherwise you will get a Lisp error when
trying to start Emacs._

That documentation might have made sense at the time. but I'm currently using
emacs 23.3.1. Is my version of speedbar still out of date? Do I have to
downgrade it? Upgrade it?

<http://cedet.sourceforge.net/> The cedet page for getting those "newer"
packages only provides download links to the entire cedet package. And without
version references in the documentation how can I tell if my debian installed
version might be good enough?

------
estevez
This reminds me of the work done by Răzvan Musăloiu-E. [1], which used some
visualization techniques commonly applied to genomic and phylogenetic data to
examine the relationships between filesystems in the Linux kernel.

[1]: <http://cs.jhu.edu/~razvanm/fs-expedition/>

------
codelion
I linked to the comments by mistake, the link for the post is at
[http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/11/over-time-
linux-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/11/over-time-linux-
package-dependencies-show-predatorprey-relationship.ars)

~~~
dfc
I think you should still be able to edit the link.

~~~
codelion
No I am not able to edit the link, am I missing something ?

------
Tobu
Would anyone liberate the research behind this? It's obviously publicly-funded
research, and I'd like to know more about what the authors mean by modularity.
Also, I'm curious what they mean by the predator/prey analogy, when the
populations are a binary rather than an arbitrary number of instances.

[ETA] Found it: <http://www.box.com/s/m0nkpxszhnccls210coe>

------
kijin
You linked to the comment section with the pun thread.

~~~
pyre
I've noticed this recently. A fair number of ArsTechnica links have the
#comment-bar anchor on the URL. It's curious.

------
101001010111
Statically-compiled programs have no known predators. They typically die from
old age.

