On 05/01/2004, at 1:01 AM, Thomas Klausner wrote:

> So if I understand you correctly, the improvement is
> that you could still build new packages with the old
> libraries installed; so it's easier to _not_ update your
> system just because a new libtiff was imported, and you
> only want to install foo-1.0, which depends on tiff.

   Yes.

   I would rather be made aware of the fact that there
is a new tiff that I should update to rather than being
forced to do that when it may not be convenient/possible.

   I don't mind running a huge update cycle after some
important work if, e.g. audit-packages tells me there
is some serious issue.  But very often in the past,
I had to postpone fixing a bug or updating a package,
because a changed base package such as tiff, pth, jpeg,
etc. forced me into a weekend-long recompile session.

   I think we should separate policy (you should update
your packages for security/bugfixes/functionality
reasons) from technical necessity (you have to update,
otherwise your packages won't compile/work any longer).

   Cheers
       ,
    Rene