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"Microsoft has something to learn from them : database managed installations"
Sorry, but isn't Windows Installer (.msi files) supposed to be that?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310598/
You shouldn't worry about ".dll hell" as long as your software vendor provides applications in .msi format (most of the application nowadays)
Actually in XP at least windows does keep track when multiple programs install/use multiple versions of shared DLLs windows will keeps a backup cache of them. So if the program asks for them again, even if another program has "uninstalled" them then it will still work. I'm not sure how they do this for dynamically/runtime opened DLLs, but at least this works most of the time. This is why you can almost always say "remove all" when XP asks if you want to uninstall the shared DLLs.




Member since:
2005-08-06
Yep you're so right. Actually I thought it was also impossible to upgrade linux. But it really isn't. Debian GNU/Linux has been upgraded continuously without any (serious) flaw here, for five years !
Microsoft has something to learn from them : database managed installations. Whenever an external program (or, in the case of Windows, also an internal Windows component) is installed, a database tracks every file related to that package. Also library dependancies (in the case of windows, DLLs). It's such a pity that when you uninstall a program which has shared DLLs there is no way to know if you can remove those DLLs safely without compromising any other installed program.
So in the Windows world, if you're the kind of person that installs/uninstalls/upgrades continuously his/her softwares, you end with an unusable system so quickly ... I was used to that, until I found Debian package management system.
Sorry this is a bit too offtopic