There’s a term called “dependency hell”. Sure, this one dependency is fine, but it depends on 3 other libraries, those 3 depend on a sum of 7 others, etc…
It’s exacerbated by “oh this library is updated for no reason than its version is newer so we need to force that bleeding edge on any ecosystem we’re in” thinking.
We’ve absolutely lost the careful, measured long-term release and maintenance cadence that we built the Internet on.
Compare Systemd.
The worst dependency hell is when a library has a strict version dependency, and another library uses that same dependency. When the second library updates their minimum version of the dependency to one that is higher than the exact version needed for the first, THAT’S dependency hell.
This wouldn’t be a problem if libraries didn’t frequently make breaking changes to their api.
“Move fast and break things” is for startups with no userbase, not libraries with millions of users.
There are times when things need to be broken. But I also definitely understand your angle.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Nah, dependency hell is when two things you want to use depend on same thing, but different versions. The depth of dependencies needed to make “this one thing” work may or may not be a problem