[MPlayer-dev-eng] .deb of 0.90rc3 release

[D Richard Felker III]

On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 02:23:44AM +0100, Arpi wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > Actually I'm thinking about using Debian on some systems in the
> > future, and I have a solution. I'm going to make packages that flagged
> > as 'provides foo' for all the crappy libs foo, and make it just be a
> > bunch of dummy symbols pointing to a single function that returns the
> > proper failure code for the lib. Then all the progs that are linked
> > against these nonsense libs will run as long as they don't actually
> > need the lib to function. :)))
> 
> lol :)
> 
> and if you've enough such fake libraries, then you can make a whole fake
> distribution and drop debian :)

Haha! Well its not much work to make the 'fake libs'. The whole thing
is actually scriptable. Just run the real libs thru nm and then use
other binutils stuff to make files with all the necessary symbols.

And, as stupid as it may sound, I think it could really be useful.
Build-from-source distros are nice for a high-performance system, and
DIY is the way to go for a primary box you spend a lot of time
maintaining. But if you want to run a low-maintainence server on
fairly low-end hardware, compiling everything takes too much time. On
the other hand, even if it's a headless server-only box, Debian will
make you install xlibs, etc. crap if you want emacs, mtr, and/or lots
of other programs that could be desirable on such a box. Providing it
with dummy X libs, etc. would save a lot of disk space and make
"apt-get upgrade" go a lot faster and smoother. And IMHO it's just
cleaner not to have tons of stuff you don't need.

Oh, well, this is getting OT...

Rich