FC4, browsers, and dependency hell

[James Wilkinson]

Beartooth SenectoFlatuloid wrote:
> FC4 isn't nearing EOL, is it?

No...

> I'm two releases behind with Epiphany, despite frequent yum updates; and I
> can't upgrade without getting into dependency hell, which (as sad
> experience has taught me) I'm not competent to escape from.

Epiphany is part of the GNOME project, and so is closely tied into the
rest of GNOME. The current releases of Epiphany are 1.6.5 (which you can
get from Fedora Core updates) and Epiphany 1.8.3:
http://live.gnome.org/Epiphany_2fDownloads#head-9d1be98f5831562450cdfc117c522d59b877189e
(or just http://live.gnome.org/Epiphany_2fDownloads and look at "Build
from source code").

Epiphany follows a Linux kernel-style numbering system: 1.7 was an
unstable development series. Epiphany 1.6 is designed for GNOME 2.10,
while Epiphany 1.8 is designed for GNOME 2.12:
http://lwn.net/Articles/150485/

What normally happens is that the GNOME project makes a release twice a
year. Normally Fedora releases twice a year, too, with the version of
GNOME that was released a few months earlier. GNOME are still on that
schedule, but Fedora aren't. Red Hat decided to delay Fedora Core 5 by a
few extra months, to enable more work to be done "under the hood". This
means that there hasn't been a full release of Fedora since GNOME 2.12
came out.  The Fedora developers considered releasing an upgrade to
GNOME 2.12 for Fedora Core 4, but decided that it would be too invasive
and cause too many problems.

Yes, upgrading to 1.8.3 would imply upgrading your system to GNOME 2.10,
and that would count as "dependency hell" in most people's books...

So Fedora Core 4 is still on GNOME 2.10, with Epiphany 1.6.x. Fedora
Core 5 is due at about the same time as GNOME 2.14, and will almost
certainly include it.

> I lost Galeon to dependency hell years ago, and still miss it. But "yum
> install galeon" does nothing.
> 
> Iiuc, dependency hell in general is a problem of distro and repos; iow,
> nobody has put Galeon, or the last couple of releases of Epiphany, into an
> FC4 repo -- or at least into any of the default ones.
> 
> Is this just lack of FC4 developer interest in those browsers?
> 
> Or is there some policy affecting the situation? 
> 
> If either has been deprecated, I haven't heard it, let alone the reasons
> for it.

I think you would be interested in these links:
http://lwn.net/Articles/156752/
http://gnomedesktop.org/node/2450

Hope this helps,

James.

-- 
E-mail address: james | The winds, however, get very lazy that time of year;
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | they don't bother going around you, they just go
                      | right on through.
                      |     -- Joe Zeff