Re: Build a portable linux binary?

[Przemek Klosowski]

On 2/22/19 3:10 AM, roland65 wrote:
> Now, some colleagues and friends who use another Linux distro, wanted to use
> my work and they simply couldn't. They have to do the same work of building
> these many Octave packages for their particular distribution. Most of them
> found it was too complicated and they gave up...
>
> So, I think it would make sense to have a way to distribute a portable
> binary package that could be run on many Linux distributions...
>
> Anyway, thanks to all for your advices. I'll try to investigate the proposed
> solutions and if I obtain some interesting results, I'll let you know...

How many different Linux distributions are your friends using? From 
where I sit, there are two main flavors: Fedora/Redhat/Centos and 
Debian/Ubuntu, and they are supported by distribution-level packages.

What you are asking for, an universal package, is in line with the 
recent trend towards modules, containers, VMs, flatpaks, etc. The whole 
concept has some serious advangages and disadvangages . On the plus 
side, one package for all environments has merits:

   - simplifies the life of Octave packagers

   - one update covers all environments

   - not held back by individual distributions' runtimes (*)

The disadvantages, however, are serious because it  decouples the Octave 
update from the distro updates

   - bugs aren't fixed by automatic distro updates; you have to 
remember to update all your individual flatpaks/modules

   - the independent package model implies baking dependencies into 
each package, which is bad:

      - calcifies and multiplies bugs

      - prevents systematic fixing of  issues across the entire ecosystem

      - is wasteful (multiple copies)

   - promotes version stagnation for Octave users because of no 
automatic updates

Time will tell which approach will win---people are trying to come up 
with mitigations for the disadvantages. I am skeptical, but I could see 
being proven wrong.


(*) THis is a serious problem that you mention: old distros sometimes 
prevent the use of new packages. At the same time, I am perplexed and 
frustrated when people insist  on simultaneously using some obsolete 
base OS and the newest version of enduser software like Octave. Having 
said that, I do realize that many people have the OS imposed on them by 
their inflexible IT organization.