Re: Upgrading without central packaging

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From: Michael G Schwern
Subject: Re: Upgrading without central packaging
Date: 23:29 on 23 Apr 2005
On Sat, Apr 23, 2005 at 04:43:49PM -0500, Peter da Silva wrote:
> > Anyhow, that's Perl-specific hates.  We're talking about Apple.
> 
> We're talking about hate.

You're right!  Let me get back to hating.


> > If the new version sucks then reinstall the old version. 
> 
> How do you do that through the package system?

In Perl?  You type the location of the older tarball in which, frankly, 
is hateful.  Via apt you say "apt-get install package==x.y" which is ok
I suppose.  dselect an aptitude let you set a "hold" on a package so the
system will not upgrade.

At least the Debian tools give you a summary of everything they're going to
install and upgrade before doing it.  The CPAN shells don't.  You have to
find out halfway through that the thing you're installing needs Combust
that has 15 dependencies.  I know the infrastructure reasons why but it
doesn't mean I can't hate it.


> > Do you still use Netscape 4?
> 
> No, but I'm sure glad that I didn't have to deal with 150 users automatically
> upgraded to Netscape 6, and instead I could test it and then when Netscape 7
> was ready I could roll it out THEN.

If you're supporting an office then you have a local mirror of the software
update server and point everything at that.  At least then you don't have
to log into every machine and install new software (HATE) or reimage with
Ghost (HATE) or have everyone use a shared application partition (the
network's down, nobody can do anything.  HATE) or in other ways micromanage
your user's desktop toaster.


> > You can't avoid upgrading forever.
> 
> Why not? I know people who are still using Mac OS 7, 8, and 9. And the
> software that runs on their computers is pretty dusty. But it still does what
> they need.

Whole new class of hate: supporting MacOS Classic.  Its hard enough having
to deal with Windows 9x, Windows NT, VMS and all the scattered Unixen out 
there, at least they're on speaking terms with POSIX.  MacOS Classic does
EVERYTHING differently and in 1988 this might have been interesting but in
2005 its just embarassing.  I would rather (and do) code for VMS than 
MacOS Classic and I HATE VMS.


> > This is hateful but it is less hateful
> > than dealing with having to work with and write for ancient versions of 
> > software.
> 
> And that attitude is why I don't want to let someone else tell me when to
> upgrade. Particularly in an environment where some of the dependencies are
> commercial and upgrading costs money.

So who's shelling out $140 for 10.4?  How long to you think it will be before
it becomes impossible to find 10.3 software?  Hate.  But 10.1 and 10.2 were
so hateful I can understand why folks dropped it like a hot iron.

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