Re: MS Windows packages and modularity

[jcupitt gmail com]

2008/10/21 Vincent Torri <vtorri univ-evry fr>:
> speaking of that, as there are other Windows library, not related to gtk,
> that may use libjpeg, tiff, png, etc..., woud it be possible to install them
> in a drectory not specific to GTK (like in Program Files/Common
> Files/generic, or something like that) ?

As I understand it, the problem is that Windows does not have package
management or library versioning (though there is a sort-of DLL
versioning for system libraries and I'm told .net introduces
unix-style versioning, I think?), so it's very hard for apps to share
libraries safely. Updating a shared 3rd party DLL, perhaps to fix a
bug, can break apps that use it in strange and unpredictable ways.

The only really safe way is for every download to include it's own
versions of all the 3rd party libraries it needs, and when one of
these libraries is patched, to re-download patched versions of all the
apps that use that library. There's a reason DLLs are named dynamic
link libraries and not shared libraries, heh.

John