On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 7:53 AM Miro HronĨok <mhroncok(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> That was a representative example. I came up with it at 11pm
after a
> long day. Don't read too much into the specifics. The point was that
> builds may require newer or older software than we have available in
> the non-modular buildroot, but don't require them at runtime.
Yes, they do. There are many ways to solve the problem, from compat packages
trough various tag-magic to buildroot overrides in custom side tags. We have had
this problem for years and we were able to deal with it quite well.
Please let's not confuse "we have figured out how to work around it by
making our packagers do a lot of tricky hacks" with "able to deal with
it quite well". This is a major issue for non-expert packagers. I
don't have statistics on how many people give up on a package because
of this issue, but I know *I* have done so (and I'd consider myself
more experienced than most people at packaging).
One of the (often un- or misinformed) major arguments people keep
using against Modularity is "it makes packaging harder!". This is one
place where it makes things *much* easier on the packagers. It's a
clear reduction in complexity.