Too many dependencies? was: Is Linux always so frustating?

[Jef Spaleta]

Michael A. Peters wrote:

> It also could be solved within OO.o by static linking that library.

Right...thats a solution... make OO.o package even bigger than it is..by
prefering to statically link everything. I wouldn't call that a solution
I'd call that a kludge.  You are just trading problems by static linking
AND perhaps creating more problems. If static linking were a generally
good idea...we'd see it in use far more often than we do. Static linking
certaintly isn't going to help the low system resource niche...which was
already brought up in this thread as a reason to fix the packaging so as
not to require mozilla.

No... the right solution...for anyone who cares enough to actually do
something productive...is to nudge the mozilla project into realizing
that their work is valuable as an application and as library framework,
and to do a better job of separating out the framework from the app. The
move from Mozilla-the integrated applictions with a kitchen sink, to the
modular model represented by firefox and thunderbird will hopefully make
it easier for them to split their project up into pieces that make it
easier for ALL distribution builders (even niche distros aimed low
system resource and legacy system targets) to pick the pieces of the
mozilla project they need for the features they want.  It makes no sense
for Fedora to specially re-divide the mozilla project into
smaller...digestable pieces...thats just extra work for little overall
gain(for the target Fedora Core is actually aimed at). How to divide the
pieces is a decision that upstream should be making to accommodate all
interested parties...so that re-dividing the pieces isn't something that
has to be done again and again and again by downstream packagers
everytime a new mozilla release is to be distributed.  

-jef