I’m curious how software can be created and evolve over time. I’m afraid that at some point, we’ll realize there are issues with the software we’re using that can only be remedied by massive changes or a complete rewrite.

Are there any instances of this happening? Where something is designed with a flaw that doesn’t get realized until much later, necessitating scrapping the whole thing and starting from scratch?

  • z3bra
    1•7 months ago

    By mounting the binary over, I mean something like a bind mount. But in your case of a wrapper script, it doesn’t apply indeed. Though in this case I would simply name the script steam-launcher and call it a day 🙂

    Having multiple executables with the same name and relying on $PATH and absolute paths feels hackish to me, but that’s only a matter of preference at this point.

    • @[email protected]
      1•7 months ago

      Though in this case I would simply name the script steam-launcher and call it a day

      The problem with that is that if another application tries to launch steam, it will bypass the script. And renaming the steam binary and give the original name to the script means that it has to be done every time steam is updated. Not to mention that if the script has a different name from the binary and I were to launch steam from the terminal to troubleshoot something it would also cause the issue again.

      Having multiple executables with the same name and relying on $PATH and absolute paths feels hackish to me

      https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1890

      The last comment in that issue is mine, compare my solution to the other solutions that people came out with and you will see it is the least hacky one, before I was even trashing the steam files if it had been launched accidentally in the wrong location lol.

      Also this is how snaps and appimages integrate into the system. You add their location to PATH and it is done. You don’t even need sudo to do these changes.

      there are better options. I mean something like a bind mount

      Do I need elevated privileges to do that?

      I’m not saying we should get rid of $PATH right now.

      I don’t think we should ever get rid of it, the reasons it may have been created may not be needed today, doesn’t mean it is no longer useful, like the several examples I just gave you.

      Do you think the same of LD_LIBRARY_PATH? It is very useful for locally compiled applications, like i3 for example, which I compile and install into my system with a patch that is not merged into the released i3 package. Because installing it into the system /bin and /libs causes my package manager to complain that certain files already exist when updating/installing other applications.

      Also do you feel the same about the XDG Base dir spec? like for example XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_CONFIG_HOME, etc are environment variables like PATH which let you move their location around.

      • z3bra
        2•7 months ago

        Right now overlays requires elevated privilèges, but ideally it shouldn’t. Rewriting the Linux kernel to implement per user namespaces like plan9 does would allow unprivileged actions from any user (just like if any user was sitting in a container, overlayed from the base system).

        I know we’re not there, and that’s not the direction development is going, but this thread is about dreams, right ? 😉

        About the XDG specs, they serve a totally different purpose so they’re out of the discussion IMO. I’m not advocating against env variables. Just $PATH which is a workaround as I see it, but your mileage may vary. As for your “issue” with steam, of course this is the best way to solve it. Because of today’s OS limitation. My point is that with a better designed namespacing implementation, there would be more elegant solutions to solve it (and would get rid of the need to use LD_LIBRARY_PATH too, or literally any *_PATH env variable)