Christian Seberino wrote:
I agree that different Linux platforms are a real headache to target all
at once....
What about rather than preemptively learning all your dependency chains,
just testing on various distros and only looking into it when there is a
problem? The reality is that at least many apps will survive the distro
upgrade unscathed.
Still too much work.
Virtual machines are about to make this go away. Most software houses I
know of are preparing to deliver their software inside full virtual
machine images (like VMWare or Parallels) complete with OS solely to
control their OS dependency chain. The big limit preventing this before
was memory size, and x86-64 finally broke that barrier.
One software company I know of actually hired a database developer to
improve the performance of one of the big databases under virtualization.
The choice for the company is "ship a multi-gigabyte image with *one*
OS" or "spend testing resources on multiple OS's."
Given that making VMWare or Parallels run on gazillions of idiotic
hardware configurations is an SEP (Somebody Else's Problem(tm)), that
decision is a no-brainer. Even given the performance loss,
virtualization is more cost-effective for these companies.
The fact that a program could deliver on Linux and run on Windows or
deliver on Windows and run on Linux is just a bonus to them.
-a
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