dependency hell OR it should not be this hard

Mon Aug 12 09:45:26 IDT 2019

Just to comment on your original post.
Don't think for one moment that things are any better in Windows.
The difference with APT issues is that there *is* something you can do
about it, and ultimately, the problem is resolvable by you.
In Windows things look a lot prettier, but I have often had an installer
fail with no reason given and then automatically roll-back with no recourse.
The solutions there often required manual editing of the registry.
I prefer APT any day.

On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 08:18, Shlomo Solomon <shlomo.solomon at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks for your VERY detailed reply. Some of it was "over my head", but
> relevant and true - although I personally like and use KDE despite it
> being quite bloated for many years now.
>
> As an aside - I got rid of KMail, Akonadi and all their "friends" years
> ago. It's hard to believe that an email program has about 80
> dependencies and "suggests" another 20 packages!!!
>
> As I wrote, I intentionally did not include too many details about the
> problem since I was not really looking for a solution.
>
> The short version - this seemed to be caused by a broken dependency and
> neither apt-get or dpkg were able to solve this until I manually
> deleted a few post-install scripts. So the "blame" should probably fall
> on the way apt-get and dpkg handle dependencies and/or such scripts,
> and not so much on the Kubuntu maintainers.
>
> Although I did save the relevant apt and dpkg logs, I don't think
> that contacting the Kubuntu maintainers will help because they will
> probably "blame" the software developers who packaged the monodevelop
> IDE (and provided there own PPA) - which never worked for me in the
> first place so I probably should have uninstalled it months ago :-).
>
>
>
> On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 21:17:39 -0400
> Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 09:05:24 +0300
> > Shlomo Solomon <shlomo.solomon at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Let me start by saying that I'm not looking for a solution - I
> > > solved my problem. I'm just angry and letting off some steam.
> >
> > [snip successful attempts using a ~10 step apt/dpkg witch's brew]
> >
> > I feel your pain. Probably we all do.
> >
> > And it's likely the better people to let off steam at would be:
> >
> > 1) The maintainers of your distro
> >
> > 2) The maintainers of your "Desktop Environment", if any
> >
> > 3) The authors of the software concerned
> >
> >
> > DISTRO:
> >
> > Your complaint isn't very detailed, but the fact that you needed apt
> > to fix it suggests you're using a Debian derived distro. Most Debian
> > extension distros, such as Ubuntu, Mint and Knoppix, add
> > hypercomplexity in order to make them more magically "we do it all
> > for you" and "user friendly", or just to make things look pretty.
> >
> > Debian itself, once a simplistic distro, has been slowly complexifying
> > itself, first by defaulting to selecting of that ball of
> > confusion Gnome3, which itself has been complexifying at a remarkable
> > rate, and then by pledging allegiance to systemd: The ultimate ball of
> > confusion.
> >
> > About the only apt packaged distro I could recommend today, from a
> > dependency-sanity point of view, would be Devuan, which rejected
> > both Gnome3 and systemd.
> >
> > I find it amusing that Debian's solution to substituting a non-systemd
> > init system involves a many-step raindance where you pin this package
> > and hold back that package.
> >
> > Of course, Redhat and Redhat-derived distros are worse.
> >
> > Tell your distro maintainers to quit making package recommends into
> > hard requirements, and to find better solutions than secret apt
> > meetings with secret dpkg handshakes, or else consider not packaging
> > it at all. There are usually substitutes and equivalents.
> >
> >
> > DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS:
> >
> > Desktop environments, which bind a window manager and a bunch of
> > applications together, including all sorts of interdependencies and
> > promiscuous communications inside and outside of dbus, were obviously
> > a bad idea from the beginning, for people who want to control their
> > computers rather than the other way around.
> >
> > If you use a desktop environment, write to them and tell them to
> > reduce promiscuous communication and dependencies. They'll laugh at
> > you, of course: Their purpose on this earth is to create obscenely
> > interdependent black boxes.
> >
> > You can avoid a lot of this by going back to a window manager and
> > selecting your applications a-la-carte, trying mightily not to include
> > desktop environment apps. If enough people were to do this (not very
> > likely, most people are wedded to their "we do it all for you"
> > environments), the "desktop environments" might catch on and put more
> > of a priority on modularity and thin interfaces (or no interfaces
> > where not needed).
> >
> > I kicked KDE and every KDE app and library off my computer in
> > 2012-2013, and lived to tell about it. I've never used Gnome3, and
> > slowly but surely I've been kicking its apps and libraries off my
> > computer. Now I boss my computer around, not the other way around.
> >
> >
> > THE SOFTWARE AUTHORS:
> >
> > True story. When using Python writing a piece of free software
> > intended to be used by others, I needed one minor but not obvious how
> > to code functionality. So I asked how to code it on the Python IRC
> > channel. Not one answer, but three or four people told me to use some
> > ginormous library, itself having lots of dependencies, that was not
> > part of the standard Python distribution.
> >
> > I explained that I didn't need all that stuff, I just needed this one
> > functionality. I didn't want my users to have to integrate this
> > library into their systems. "No problem", one of the IRC denizens
> > proclaimed, "that's what the Python <whatever> is for: You can build
> > your own Python interpreter for your one application, and ship the
> > interpreter along with the app". Look at your computer's clock: This
> > is not an April Fools joke, this happened.
> >
> > If course I said "no", and then the real abuse happened, with the
> > usual "don't reinvent the wheel" and "scared to learn new things" and
> > a new creative diss: "Real programmers try new packages just to get
> > familiar with them, it's a real opportunity!"
> >
> > Unfortunately, these guys weren't unusual. Way too many programmers,
> > in the name of avoiding reinventing the wheel, integrate somebody
> > else's wheel, when all they needed was an easily available single
> > spoke. You know who suffers? The distro maintainers and the users.
> >
> > All too many developers put absolutely zero priority on simplicity.
> > The slightest improvement in "pretty", or the slightest "improvement"
> > to keep the user from having to use a text editor, is perfect
> > justification to bring in a gargantuan software library with poorly
> > documented API, lots of child dependencies, grandchild dependencies,
> > and who knows how far down the tree it goes. And at any given time,
> > at least one dependency of that software dependency tree gets buggy or
> > goes unmaintained or sets a dependency on something so modern it won't
> > work with your distro, and you get to use a 10 step apt/dpkg
> > choreography.
> >
> > Tell the software authors your objections to gratuitous dependency
> > inclusions, as well as unnecessary and unhelpful communications with
> > barely related software. Tell them you choose software to work and
> > keep on working, not to be pretty or spare you from using an editor.
> >
> > And then do what you told them: When evaluating free software
> > alternatives, significantly downvote those with too many, or
> > unnecessary, dependencies. And if the simpler software lacks a feature
> > you need, you can usually kludge it together with a couple
> > shellscripts and maybe some Python/Perl/Ruby/Lua/awk/grep/sed. We all
> > hate to kludge, but I think the ultimate kludge is some conceited
> > developer requiring 100K lines of imported code to give a couple
> > features he could have done in 100 lines of self-written code, if
> > he'd bothered.
> >
> > I copied the GoLUG mailing list because it's my home-town LUG, and the
> > Devuan mailing list because they're the one direct Debian fork
> > that eschews unnecessary dependencies and intermodular communications.
> > Notice that some forks and extensions of Devuan also keep complexity
> > to a minimum.
> >
> > SteveT
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Linux-il mailing list
> > Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
> > http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
>
>
>
> --
> Shlomo Solomon
> http://the-solomons.net
> Claws Mail 3.16.0 - Kubuntu 18.04
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
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>

-- 
--
Jeremy Hoyland
jhoyland at gmail.com
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