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Linux apps that run anywhere

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Re: Linux apps that run anywhere

#51

Post by earenndil »

nemothekid wrote: post #46
earenndil wrote: post #23

It makes me really sad that this is necessary. Unix has a concept of shared libraries. And somehow it managed to get ruined so irrevocably that there's no going back. This—this was a solved problem! It really was. It was solved, and then we unsolved it when we decided that 'move fast and break things' was more important than ABI stability. And now shared libraries are completely useless. I struggle to name a single u…

> It was solved, and then we unsolved it when we decided that 'move fast and break things' was more important than ABI stability.' I don't believe it was "solved", and I don't believed it was caused by people "moving fast and breaking things". Linux became HUGE, in terms of the number of people involved, and there is no master body that would govern anything. As an application developer, you could build against libfo…

That's a pessimistic and imo unwarranted attitude. There are absolutely platforms that maintain backwards compatibility for decades on end. The most salient example is the linux kernel, but—-well, linux distributions are not a monolith. Fine. How about the c language, or common lisp? Perl packages are installed relatively globally, and things don't really break. And sure there's some fragmentation there, like with sbcl-only lisp packages, or gnu extensions, but by and large I can compile an arbitrary perl/common lisp/c package with an arbitrary implementation of that language and, at least in the case of perl and lisp, it works basically the same way it did 10 years ago. This is possible, because it has happened.

I will grant, however, that it is hard. Newer languages—rust, c#, java, python, js—are trying. Of them I would say rust is the best, followed closely by c#, with python and js taking a distant 3rd and 4th, but none of these match the older languages. But—rust is newer than c# and java and python and js. They decided: we're going to make a high-quality, stable package repository, with a culture of stability in packages. And aside from stuff requiring nightly, that seems to be happening, it's still pretty good, and it's still a hell of a lot better than linux. Granted, linux has a much more difficult situation to wrangle, and because it's less monolithic than those other constructions, tragedy of the commons tends to occur, but I think all it takes is a group of people deciding that they will take the work to make things right, getting support, getting lucky, making a super-dynamic linker, and we can fix this.

Re: Linux apps that run anywhere

#52

Post by kbumsik »

earenndil wrote: post #23

It makes me really sad that this is necessary. Unix has a concept of shared libraries. And somehow it managed to get ruined so irrevocably that there's no going back. This—this was a solved problem! It really was. It was solved, and then we unsolved it when we decided that 'move fast and break things' was more important than ABI stability. And now shared libraries are completely useless. I struggle to name a single u…

> HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

For example, distribution's package update cycle is so slow that some packages are never updated to upstream for some reason. For example, x11vnc's latest version is 0.9.16 but Ubuntu/Debian has locked down to 0.9.13 for more than a half of a decade [1]. ddclient is also a good example [2].

In my case, I made a program that requires >= Python3.6 but I realized Ubuntu was stuck in 3.5 for years so that I was forced to use AppImage to include in-house compiled Python3.6.

Not to mention that Electron apps are simply not compatible with distribution's dependency management.

[1]: https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=x11vnc&searchon=...

[2]: https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=ddclient

Re: Linux apps that run anywhere

#53

Post by earenndil »

vlovich123 wrote: post #37
earenndil wrote: post #23

It makes me really sad that this is necessary. Unix has a concept of shared libraries. And somehow it managed to get ruined so irrevocably that there's no going back. This—this was a solved problem! It really was. It was solved, and then we unsolved it when we decided that 'move fast and break things' was more important than ABI stability. And now shared libraries are completely useless. I struggle to name a single u…

Private developer wants to distribute binary + shared dependency libs. On Windows they package it into an installer which unpacks it into the target destination & everything works. On MacOS the user gets a folder that acts like file within which everything is stored. Additionally there are reliable releases so something targeting a minimum of MacOS 10.14 has a reliable way to specify that in the toolchain & know that…

Private developer wants to distribute binary, have system include shared dependency libs because—guess what, they're shared. That's what we could have had. That's the problem this is getting around.

Re: Linux apps that run anywhere

#54

Post by earenndil »

kitotik wrote: post #33
earenndil wrote: post #23

It makes me really sad that this is necessary. Unix has a concept of shared libraries. And somehow it managed to get ruined so irrevocably that there's no going back. This—this was a solved problem! It really was. It was solved, and then we unsolved it when we decided that 'move fast and break things' was more important than ABI stability. And now shared libraries are completely useless. I struggle to name a single u…

Isn’t cross platform/multi vendor development the cause? Static binaries are just a form of vertical integration.

The problem that's being solved is that vendors are incompatible, which could easily be solved if they were compatible. They all run a linux kernel. They all use ELF and x11 and opengl. If I compile 'hello, world' on one distro, I can drop it onto another random distro and it'll still work, but after a certain threshold of complexity, that stops working. It doesn't have to stop working.

Re: Linux apps that run anywhere

#55

Post by Annatar »

pjmlp wrote: post #28
Annatar wrote: post #17

"No need to install". This is every system administrator's nightmare: users running arbitrary executables bypassing operating system packaging. Come time to upgrade or reinstall what can happen? If there are security updates which are needed to the program, what could happen, since this is statically linked? This is the pinnacle of destructive lazyness and amateurism in IT: as a developer it is one's job to master ev…

Any savy UNIX admin will be able to prevent new executables to run under user accounts.

But it won't solve the problem of developers' unwillingness to learn how to make operating system packages now will it?

I don't get it: people like that will sink and waste hundreds of hours learning useless garbage like Puppet, Ansible, Chef, Docker or Kubernetes without batting an eyelash or even thinking twice about it, but they'll argue and fight back like hell come time to deliver their software as clean OS packages because they don't want to learn the technology. Technology which exists for them first and foremost: OS packaging is meant to be a developer's tool and best friend.

Re: Linux apps that run anywhere

#56

Post by [deleted] »

flukus wrote: post #48
earenndil wrote: post #23

It makes me really sad that this is necessary. Unix has a concept of shared libraries. And somehow it managed to get ruined so irrevocably that there's no going back. This—this was a solved problem! It really was. It was solved, and then we unsolved it when we decided that 'move fast and break things' was more important than ABI stability. And now shared libraries are completely useless. I struggle to name a single u…

> I struggle to name a single useful c library that's useful as a system-wide shared library nowadays. Libcurl is the only one I frequently use that seem to take it seriously, there might be others but frustratingly few will indicate what level of binary compatibility they guarantee, it would be nice to have a list of reliable libraries. Not just for binary compatability but I would be nice to know how much churn you…

[deleted]

Re: Linux apps that run anywhere

#57

Post by pjmlp »

Annatar wrote: post #55
pjmlp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any savy UNIX admin will be able to prevent new executables to run under user accounts.

But it won't solve the problem of developers' unwillingness to learn how to make operating system packages now will it? I don't get it: people like that will sink and waste hundreds of hours learning useless garbage like Puppet, Ansible, Chef, Docker or Kubernetes without batting an eyelash or even thinking twice about it, but they'll argue and fight back like hell come time to deliver their software as clean OS pack…

Because those providing the said technology cannot agree what it means to be a GNU/Linux OS, and we have limited time on our life to bother with thousand variants of it.

Re: Linux apps that run anywhere

#58

Post by oblio »

bubblethink wrote: post #45
vlovich123 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private developer wants to distribute binary + shared dependency libs. On Windows they package it into an installer which unpacks it into the target destination & everything works. On MacOS the user gets a folder that acts like file within which everything is stored. Additionally there are reliable releases so something targeting a minimum of MacOS 10.14 has a reliable way to specify that in the toolchain & know that…

>Finally, the big advantage is that the release is done by the author I see that as the biggest net win of the current system although it may seem inefficient or bureaucratic. I do not trust the authors. The only modicum of sanity and trust comes from the fact that debain/fedora maintainers are actually on your (the user's) side and have strong rules and guidelines about everything. Desktop linux doesn't have that mu…

With your logic, you've already lost.

If you don't trust the developer of an application you already run, you're screwed in any scenario.

Yours is not a realistic threat model.

Re: Linux apps that run anywhere

#59

Post by earenndil »

oblio wrote: post #58
bubblethink wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Finally, the big advantage is that the release is done by the author I see that as the biggest net win of the current system although it may seem inefficient or bureaucratic. I do not trust the authors. The only modicum of sanity and trust comes from the fact that debain/fedora maintainers are actually on your (the user's) side and have strong rules and guidelines about everything. Desktop linux doesn't have that mu…

With your logic, you've already lost. If you don't trust the developer of an application you already run, you're screwed in any scenario. Yours is not a realistic threat model.

I think the parent means that, for opensource software, they trust their distro maintainers to read the source code and only publish trustworthy software.

Re: Linux apps that run anywhere

#60

Post by Lowkeyloki »

What I'm disappointed about with AppImage is that it doesn't deal with differing architectures as far as I can tell. Which would really help me right now as I had to send my laptop to Dell for repairs and I'm now using just my Android phone and my Raspberry Pi 3B+ as a desktop. And compiling stuff on the Pi is SO SLOW!
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