On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 23:16:08 +0200, Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> Since when do programs == package? You don't seem to understand that > I'm talking in a generic way about software. Actually, I'm mainly > talking about software which is *not* part of the package management > system [1]. I agree with you that packages *in* Debian should not use > /etc/debian_version or lsb_release, but what of software (not > packages) *outside* Debian. > Think about Enterprise (non-free) software like Oracle, HP Openview, > Tivoli, Remedy... Do you expect vendors of this software to > understand^Wimplement package management based dependencies for *all* > Linux distributions? LSB tries to simplify the Linux environment for > such software. Lsb_release is defined as the an answer to the question > "which distribution am I running in and which release is it?" > Developers of such software, taking the LSB as a reference, can use > lsb_release to determine where they are in. However, if we "lie" [2] > to these tools we are actually making this software break. Frankly, helping vendors of non-free software lies far below the ability to provide our users the option to do partial upgrades, apt-pinning, etc. If we are not going to impact the utility to the users; I am indifferent to adding things to help non-free software vendors. manoj -- It's easy to solve the halting problem with a shotgun. :-) Larry Wall in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/> 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]