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“Evolution behaves like a tinkerer” (François Jacob, Science, 1977). Software systems provide a singular opportunity to understand biological processes using concepts from network theory. The Debian GNU/Linux operating system allows us to explore the evolution of a complex network in a unique way. The modular design detected during its growth is based on the reuse of existing code in order to minimize costs during programming. The increase of modularity experienced by the system over time has not counterbalanced the increase in incompatibilities between software packages within modules. This negative effect is far from being a failure of design. A random process of package installation shows that the higher the modularity, the larger the fraction of packages working properly in a local computer. The decrease in the relative number of conflicts between packages from different modules avoids a failure in the functionality of one package spreading throughout the entire system. Some potential analogies with the evolutionary and ecological processes determining the structure of ecological networks of interacting species are discussed.
Embrace what you're not certain off,
keep an eye on what you're confident about.
IMHO this article offers a scientific baseline for, if possible, creating a new way of dealing with package dependencies. It is a sad but true fact at this time a single package can disrupt an entire system. I'm no dev but tracking such 'bugs' must be daunting. Based on my experience i'd say Debian is very useable and stable, after a while. In itself Debian allready delivers a uniquely stable environment but from my perspective there's room for improvement. As such i hope that some devs sit around to discuss this article, and have fun
Just my 2 humble cents. While packages are split between stable - testing - unstable (experimental) there do seem to be some dependencies going awry at times. Can this be reduced by introducing package-clusters for known conflicts ? Here also referring to external repositories ( virtualbox ) which do seem to break things. Possibly an evolution in the use of and for apt/preferences would be a way out. This is a very usefull mechanism which if evolved would have Debian benefit from great flexibility out of the box. I hope this can contribute in some way.
Best Regards,
JL
Embrace what you're not certain off,
keep an eye on what you're confident about.
