OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#271

Post by xvilka » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

progval wrote: post #105

blackhaz wrote: post #14

I am arguing about this on FreeBSD forums - from an end user perspective. I think the benefits of saving disk space by sharing libraries do not justify the inconveniences we, desktop BSD and Linux users, obtain from being forced to disrupt and upgrade hundreds of installed software packages, just because one single desired upgrade requires to pull its dependencies. The whole ecosystem falls down like a card house - o…

> auto-update more than a thousand packages, praying my Python and other projects survive, just because I want a browser update You may want to check out Nix. It's a package manager which isolates each program's dependencies; so you can have multiple versions of the same package. > or a security fix having a centralized repository like this helps in case a it's a library that needs a security fix, because you only ne…

Guix[1] also. It's written in Scheme but also solves the bootstrapping problem with minimal seed[2].

[1] http://guix.gnu.org/

[2] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Reduced-Binary-Seed...

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#272

Post by pizza234 » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

jcelerier wrote: post #201

bibyte wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it feels like I am living in an alternate reality. After I started using Arch Linux as my main OS I was fully prepared for it to break every few months. But it's been more then 2 years (maybe even 3 or 4 ?) and not one breakage. Also keep in mind that I update it every single day. From time to time I check the Arch Linux news site to see if anything needs manual intervention. So far I haven't needed to do a…

can confirm, went to arch linux due to constant breakage under Debian & Ubuntu, it's be so much more pleasant since then. No more everything exploding left and right as soon as I need a newer GCC or libav version.

Changing the system default GCC version, like it seems you did, is not good practice in environments with conservative package policies.

There's also no need to do that, since nobody prevents users from installing newer versions alongside old ones, and invoking them directly.

Even not considering the fact that different GCC versions can coexist, complaining about this breakage in absolute terms doesn't make any sense. Releases changing default compiler versions inevitably cause more breakages with packages who haven't been updated to be compatible with newer GCC versions. So ultimately it's a matter of choosing the distributions with the appropriate release model, not a matter of Ubuntu/Debian breaking stuff.

Libav has also been deprecated in Ubuntu long ago, so it's not clear what you refer to. If you happen to refer to the transition from and back to ffmpeg, that's very old history.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#273

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #239

rumanator wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I came as a 10+ year Debian user to Archlinux because it did too much automagic under the hood that broke and took a lot of time to fix. This assertion makes no sense. Debian Stable has always the paragon of stability to the point that it's actually criticised for it. The Debian Testing release is even famous for being more solid than other distro's stable releases. Breaking changes in Debian are practically only r…

The problem isn't so much that Debian packages or the ecosystem "breaks" as such, but that you run in to bugs (sometimes already fixed ones), and that you're then basically stuck with that unless you, the maintainer, or someone else decides to backport the fix, and they frequently don't get backported especially not for "minor" bugs.

Just compile it yourself and put it in /usr/local.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#274

Post by Rusky » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

jiveturkey wrote: post #57

stanferder wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it actually work though? It seems like there is a significant difference between the expectation that semantic versioning should result in no disruption, and the experience of the parent to your comment. I'd be interested to know exactly what went wrong that lead that poster to be pessimistic.

Yes it does actually work and has for decades. The poster is either confused or doing something different, I expect. The specific notice mentions rust dependencies. Rust does not have shared libraries, so a Rust [security] update means all rust binaries must be completely rebuilt. That seems to be part of OpenBSD's concern, and perhaps this has "triggered" the poster. user blackhaz random forum post found: > mariourk…

> Rust does not have shared libraries

Nonsense. Rust has shared libraries just as much as C and C++ do. Distributions can and do build individual Rust crates as shared libraries, and crate authors can go further and offer a shared library with a C ABI that remains stable across rustc versions. (The latter is what cbindgen is for.)

The problem here is that the maintainers don't want to keep multiple versions of a crate around, so when any single application uses a newer version it forces an update on all the rest. Which is exactly what Rust's tendency toward static linking avoids.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#275

Post by nils-m-holm » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #254

nils-m-holm wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole ecosystem falls down like a card house [...] > praying my Python and other projects survive [...] And this is exactly why I never update. Every 10 years or so I go through the pain of installing a new version of the OS, mostly because the browser no longer works on most websites. But then, now that the web becomes more and more uninteresting to me, I might as well keep the current version until the hardwa…

What type of system is this? I appreciate the sentiment but I’m surprised you manage to pull it off seemingly easily. You don’t run into software compatibility issues? (I’m trying to do something similar by downgrading to an old version of macOS more-or-less permanently, because I don’t like where the platform has gone.)

I am running various flavors of BSD, mostly FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The only compatibility issues are with web sites that require the latest browsers.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#276

Post by Izkata » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

bibyte wrote: post #183

celticmusic wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left arch linux because I got tired of all the breakages, so not a great example.

Sometimes it feels like I am living in an alternate reality. After I started using Arch Linux as my main OS I was fully prepared for it to break every few months. But it's been more then 2 years (maybe even 3 or 4 ?) and not one breakage. Also keep in mind that I update it every single day. From time to time I check the Arch Linux news site to see if anything needs manual intervention. So far I haven't needed to do a…

> Also keep in mind that I update it every single day.

I can't remember what I was looking at, but within the past week I ran across a comment that said Arch Linux only supports constant upgrades such as that, and any delays that result in skipping a version are what risk causing breakages. The commenter was very surprised that they were even thinking about supporting a version jump on whatever the thread was about (pretty sure it was somewhere here on HN).

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#277

Post by LorenPechtel » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

bscphil wrote: post #84

blackhaz wrote: post #14

I am arguing about this on FreeBSD forums - from an end user perspective. I think the benefits of saving disk space by sharing libraries do not justify the inconveniences we, desktop BSD and Linux users, obtain from being forced to disrupt and upgrade hundreds of installed software packages, just because one single desired upgrade requires to pull its dependencies. The whole ecosystem falls down like a card house - o…

> I think the benefits of saving disk space by sharing libraries do not justify the inconveniences we, desktop BSD and Linux users, obtain from being forced to disrupt and upgrade hundreds of installed software packages, just because one single desired upgrade requires to pull its dependencies It's funny, from your point of view having a centralized repository with a (usually) single (usually) latest version of a lib…

What they should do is have a centralized repository of packages but allow multiple versions that function independently. That way nothing breaks when one program installs a newer version.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#278

Post by zozbot234 » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

Rusky wrote: post #274

jiveturkey wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does actually work and has for decades. The poster is either confused or doing something different, I expect. The specific notice mentions rust dependencies. Rust does not have shared libraries, so a Rust [security] update means all rust binaries must be completely rebuilt. That seems to be part of OpenBSD's concern, and perhaps this has "triggered" the poster. user blackhaz random forum post found: > mariourk…

> Rust does not have shared libraries Nonsense. Rust has shared libraries just as much as C and C++ do. Distributions can and do build individual Rust crates as shared libraries, and crate authors can go further and offer a shared library with a C ABI that remains stable across rustc versions. (The latter is what cbindgen is for.) The problem here is that the maintainers don't want to keep multiple versions of a crat…

It's not that simple. New versions of Firefox can require a higher minimum version for the Rust compiler, and upgrading that will break the ABI for all crates that don't stick to a pure C ABI, regardless of shared vs. static linking,

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#279

Post by mxmilkb » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

swsieber wrote: post #238

celticmusic wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left arch linux because I got tired of all the breakages, so not a great example.

Oh man. This seems to have spawned an anecdota war. I think the main issue/benefit with arch linux is that it wont try to do anything for you, except give you extra instructions for when a package change requires "manual intervention". I put that in quotes because I don't think of that as breakage, I think of that as normal upkeep. We'll, as long as it's listed. Anyway, the implications are that things can be stable…

Out-of-date software and related dependency hell is the breakage that rolling-release/Arch gets me away from.

More UX anecdote; I use Arch (btw) but trying Manjaro just now for something so I grabed an image from osboxes.org; the system update fails after hitting enter on the default options https://i.imgur.com/OTNRMrH.png

'y' for the last would have continued things, but "ugh, I have to think about something" is breakage to some.

Re: OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

#280

Post by shakna » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #243

shakna wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu has _more_ magic that breaks a lot more frequently in less expected ways than Debian.

Huh, when does anything break in Ubuntu LTS if you don't do a dist-upgrade? There's nothing to break if nothing changes. And the minor version upgrades along the years have not broken anything on any of my installs. Arch on the other hand ...

> Huh, when does anything break in Ubuntu LTS if you don't do a dist-upgrade?

That's a fist-full of caveats. Arch is willing to upgrade the kernel, maybe you should include a dist-upgrade in the comparison.