Ports management tools in the base (Was: Re: cvs commit: www/en/projects/ideas ideas.xml)

[Andrew Pantyukhin]

On 3/21/07, Alexander Leidinger <Alexander at leidinger.net> wrote:
> When you need a program which needs a newer lib than installed on a
> production system, but you don't get a maintenance window to update
> all other programs which use this lib, then not having the old lib
> will hurt.
>
> When the reason for the library version bump also requires to change
> some parts in the source of the programs which make use of the lib,
> you have to update all programs at once. If some programs have bugs in
> more recent versions which you can't accept in production and when you
> need to install a program which needs the new lib version, you are
> busted when you don't have the old lib around.

But don't you smell an architectural flaw here (of the
ports system) and don't you feel that working around it
in a tool in the base system might only mess things up
even more?..