XPost: alt.comp.freeware   
   From: ZapSpam@SpamMeNot.invalid   
      
   Joe Zeff  wrote in   
   :   
      
   > On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 06:21:59 +0000, Spamblk wrote:   
   >   
   >> The problems can be reduced by static linking of binaries. Some programs   
   >> like Firefox seem to be compiled in such a way that its binaries are   
   >> fairly flexible over different distros but IMO Linux is even more   
   >> plagued by dependencies than Windows.   
   >   
   > *Shrug!*  Just get yourself a distro with a good package manager   
   > (Anything that's based on Debian or RedHat qualifies, and I'm sure there   
   > are others.) and let it do the job for you.  If your distro can't keep   
   > you out of Dependency Hell, it's not worth using.   
      
   Maybe I'm being difficult but it seems you are describing the use of a package   
   manager to deal with (IMO) bad behavior. In this instance I'm thinking of where   
   the main executable is circa 100k then 5 or ten times the size in dependencies.   
   Not the standard system functions but esoteric shared objects that arent used   
   by   
   anything else.   
      
   My recent example was the dig (Domain Internet Groper) tool. I downloaded the   
   bindutils version and found it needed various dependencies like libidn.so.*.   
   Sometimes you can satisfy by symlinking to the existing (different version)   
   libidn .so but this version of dig was having none of it complaining of   
   undefined symbols. Now I agree that standard routines used by many programs   
   should be in a shared object but half a dozen shared object files used by one   
   executable and nowehere else? Not for me thanks.   
      
   I ditched the bindutils version, got a version from dnsutils. A large   
   executable   
   but with minimal dependencies ran perfectly out of the box. Happy days.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)