Multiple versions of a lib on Linux

So i often have the problem that i work on applications that need different versions of the same library. I can usually not have two versions of the same library installed but i can link to specific local versions. However if these libraries again depend on differnt version of something else i'm quickly getting into "dependency hell". I understand (i think) the benefits of sharing libraries but frankly i would prefer if every program/lib would come with everything it needs. Is there any linux distro out there that tried something like this ? would it be possible ?

Thanks!

Joe

Posted 2010-12-04T19:56:36.303

Reputation: 11

I have no clue what you're talking about. It's very easy to have multiple versions of the same library installed provided they use different sonames. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams – 2010-12-04T20:29:00.883

1@Ignacio: "provided they use different sonames" is exactly the problem. Surprisingly, this is one area in which Windows is better that Linux in fixing DLL Hell. (I will get flamed, for sure) – harrymc – 2010-12-04T22:02:12.150

@harrymc: It really isn't, except in the case of some fringe libraries. Library developers for the most part do use sonames properly. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams – 2010-12-04T22:04:11.273

Answers

The dependancy probelm mainly occurs when you are compiling one pacakge manually or installing a single deb or rpm package that you downloaded. It will be a good idea to use the package manager provided in your distro to install the packages. In ubuntu you can use the apt-get or in redhat based distro you can use yum package managers. You need to add the 3rd party repositories like http://rpmfusion.org/ , if the package that you are looking for is not in the distro default repository.

Unni

Posted 2010-12-04T19:56:36.303

Reputation: 171

1Yeah sure it is one solution to stick with the distribution offers you, but if you want bleeding edge versions of certain programs that won't work ;( – Joe – 2010-12-04T21:12:33.807

-1

There is a website for sta.li, a linux distro where everything is statically linked. But it does not have much documentation and only a 23MB tarball, so I highly doubt it's anything near usable.

Some applications offer statically linked versions, though. Ubuntu package search

user54114

Posted 2010-12-04T19:56:36.303

Reputation: 457