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Re: why we hate fink
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Re: why we hate fink

On Jan 26, 2004, at 8:29 PM, Bill Northcott wrote:

From: Rich Cook <email@hidden>
Hmmm... How is placing a useful library in a standard location like
/usr/local/lib "pollution?"

/usr/local/lib is only marginally different to /sw/lib. If either is in the default ld/dyld search paths or I use -L/usr/local/lib in a link command, I am immediately condemned to link all the Fink/whatever stuff that has been installed, whether I want it or not. That is what I mean by pollution. Obviously the same applies to headers at compile time.

You are just incorrect here. -L/usr/local/lib does not link *ANYTHING* in, it simply adds /usr/local/lib to the search paths for libs you explicitly request with -lname.
Also, there is an important difference between /sw/lib and /usr/local/lib that seems to escape your attention: everybody else knows about /usr/local/lib, whereas /sw/lib is a bit odd. Following convention can be useful when porting codes across multiple platforms.

It has to be put somewhere, and although
it does make it easier to automate their maintenance if they are
segregated into Frameworks, having this great Apple scheme to put
libraries in unusual paths with unusual compiler flags to access them
is a bother to people who just want to port to OS X codes that already
run on Unix. There is no One Great True Path for installing libraries,
IMHO. Both methods have good and bad to them.

I have no argument against that. If you want a trad UNIX set up then use UNIX or Linux. MacOS X is about being able to easily port UNIX/GNU stuff, but at the expense of a slight increase in programmer effort it can achieve great improvements in maintainability, reliability and usability for non-programmers.

Easy, with a slight increase in effort? Hmm. :-)
My point is that OS X IS a traditional UNIX setup, in most ways. That's what makes porting to it attractive. Why should I have to switch to Linux when OS X does just fine with the addition of /usr/local/lib?


Apple's history is
littered with ideas that are good on paper but which become a big
hassle because nobody outside of Apple buys into them.  One of the
great things about Apple now is its BSD underpinnings.  Each Unix has
its quirks, but OS X should not be the first to try to do away with
/usr/local!

Even so great a personage as Linus Torvalds has opined that maybe the GNU community could learn something from it. There really comes a point at which throwing out the old garbage is a good thing. It is certainly part of the Steve Jobs philosophy. The original Mac threw away the book on CLIs. The iMac dropped serial ports, SCSI etc. etc. Probably without that leap I would still be stuffing around with some naff serial connection on my digital camera.

True, Apple innovates. The original Mac threw away CLIs, and guess what? I wished for years that my Mac had a CLI. Now it has one, and it rocks. So sometimes Apple's innovations are wrong. The Frameworks concept adds more confusion than it helps, as far as I can see, but that's because I'm interested in cross-platform Unix tools, not pure Aqua code.

The only way for Apple to win this battle is to make it easy to do it
the "right" way and the "wrong" way at the same time.

You are very welcome to the wrong way. I just like to make it clear to others what I see as the right way. So that things can move forwards. 

Trolling alert!  You are Hitler!  :-)

--
Richard Cook
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Bldg-451 Rm-2043, Mail Stop L-561
7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA, 94550, USA
phone (925) 423-9605 (work) fax (925) 423-8704
---
Information Management & Graphics Grp., Services & Development Div., Integrated Computing & Communications Dept.
(opinions expressed herein are mine and not those of LLNL)
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 >Re: why we hate fink (From: Bill Northcott <email@hidden>)



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