Is updating a library with thousands of dependents, without individually testing those dependents, any more feasible?
In NixOS, we try to work the test suites into the build process and rebuilds happen when any dependencies change, so I'd like to think we get (almost) the best of both worlds.
Which coincidentally is why I'm not using Linux right now. :) A move towards static linking in the Linux world would go a long way towards changing that.
(Everything I've read about NixOS seems great, thanks for helping with that—it's just that it also has a large barrier to entry.)
It doesn't necessarily need to be the upstream developer, it could be some other organization analogous to a distro maintainer. What matters is that someone who is familiar with the software and code base has actually tested the update in a purposeful way.
> As opposed to me, as an individual user with no familiarity with the code base, just switching out the pieces and preying nothing goes wrong.
Wouldn't this be the task of your distro's mainteners, not you? (Who will have familiarity with all codebases as well as options to contact the original developers if there is an unsolvable issue)
Sure, and when they’re done, they can recompile the static binary and send me an updated copy.
I don’t want to update until they’ve finished testing the dependents. At least with static binaries, I can update some of the dependents sooner as the maintainers work through their lists.