Re: Windows and DLLs

[Jochem Huhmann <joh unidui uni-duisburg de>]

On Thu, 01 Oct 1998 11:05:29 PDT David Jeske wrote:

> 1) a user wants to use an app which only works with a newer
> lib. (i.e. he can't install it easily unless he's administrator, or a
> unix wizard)

Someone has to manage the system. Someone has to install apps. That's 
the admin. With this app wrapper thing, Joe User installs foo.app 1.2, 
because it has this bar-feature he needs. Great. Then the admin 
installs foo.app 1.21 - Joe still works with his outdated 1.2, which 
may have serious security flaws.

On a distributed multi user system (aka Unix) the admin should install
and manage apps, not the user. There *may* be circumstances under which
a user wishes to install his own apps with his own libs, like it is the
case with gtk and gimp and gnome and such - but that are actually not
users, but developers. Users should not need to install apps, they
should work with the apps and libs which are installed and stable.

> 2) a newer micro version of a lib fixes a bug which caused problems
> with some app, but the fix causes problems with another app.

The admin has to wrap a script around this app. Let users do that kind
of stuff and you will have 12 users working on this machine with 13
different versions of that app, using 14 different libs. Total Cost of
Ownership, anyone? Such a system would be as worse as Windows. Windows
(and to some degree also NeXTstep) was meant as single user system,
where the user is the admin - actually there is no admin at all, there
is just a hell of a mess. Free software, which produces new versions of
apps and libs on a daily basis makes it even worse. With application
wrappers you will have dozens of slightly different versions of any
given library and application floating around on a machine or network.
They may all work, but I certainly would not like to manage such a
system, trying to keep it a secure and friendly place.

Gnome  (and all its apps) is work in progress, you should not take it
for a thing for *users*. Users will get Gnome 1.0 someday, like they get
Gimp 1.0 with GTK 1.0 and it will just work. When Gnome 1.1 is out, they
will "rpm -U" it and all will be fine. Everyone working with or at Gnome
now is on his own. 

Sorry, I don't see any problems with the way applications are installed
and libs are managed now. It has been working great for many years,
better than any other way, IMHO.


	Jochem