John Hinsley <jhinsley at telinco.co.uk> is widely believed to have written:

> Tim Rowledge wrote:
> > 
> > Whatever the actual implementation for packaging, please, let's not end
> > up with the utterly infuriating problem I keep hitting everytime I am
> > unfortunate enough to have to try to load anything on linux
> Probably on the distribution disk!
Hah! I should be so lucky!
> 
> > What is a compatible version?
> 
> The one it tells you you need!
Not often!
> 
> > Do I already have one?
> 
> See above!
Hah!

OK so I'm a grumpy old cynic. Deosn't stop it from being my actual
experience though.
> 
> Ah well, that just about wraps it up for Linux, doesn't it ;-).
Not the point of the comment. I want _us_ to avoid the problem. Don't
care much about who else suffers from it, or even whether I could avoid
it in linux-land by using {blah} distribution.

> Debian have a superior package management system
> which will download dependencies automatically and while....
Then we should consider copying it.
> > 
> > Another annoyance would be the nonsensical dependence; you have to load
> > a umpteen gazillabyte package just for the logical equivalent of a
> > single header file.
> 
> This wouldn't be anything like as big a problem on something relatively
> small like Squeak. Of course, the "how it's done in Debian" is available
> to anyone who reads C better than me! Let's not re-invent the wheel!
Exactly my point. 

-- 
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.