DIP11: Automatic downloading of libraries

[Don]

Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> I think things like apt-get and 0install are very good models for
>> us to follow
> 
> Blargh. I often think I'm the last person people should listen
> to when it comes to package management because the topic always
> brings three words to my mind: "shitload of fuck".
> 
> I've never seen one that I actually like. I've seen only two
> that I don't hate with the burning passion of 1,000 suns, and
> both of them are pretty minimal (Slackware's old tgz system and
> my build.d. Note: they both suck, just not as much as the
> alternatives)
> 
> On the other hand, this is exactly why I jump in these threads.
> There's some small part of me that thinks maybe, just maybe,
> we can be the first to create a system that's not a steaming pile
> of putrid dogmeat.
 >
 >
 > Some specific things I hate about the ones I've used:
[snip]

This seems to me to be very similar to the situation with search engines 
prior to google. Remember AltaVista, where two out of every three search 
results were a broken link?

Seems to me, that what's ultimately needed is a huge compatibility 
matrix, containing every version of every library, and its compatibility 
with every version of every other library. Or something like that.

Package manager shouldn't silently use packages which have never been 
used with each other before.
It's a very difficult problem, I think, but at least package owners 
could manually supply a list of other packages they've tested with.