OK, this does seem like a bit of a back-pedal, doesn’t it?

Well, that’s the thing about the “Linux Model” – the very things that are so irritating can also be the reason it works.

Let me explain by returning to one example I mentioned in my prior post, using C++ in Jupyter Hub.

To recap: C++ used to work in Jupyter Hub, then suddenly stopped after an update of some packages in Conda. Conda is the environment that manages Jupyter Hub, and works a lot like apt-get for Linux. After one update, all things C++ failed to the point the kernel would not load at all. An examination of logs revealed <features.h> was missing as well as many other library errors.

Simple google search revealed many with similar (but NOT the same) problems, and many complicated workarounds.

This is one of the problems with the Linux Model. The many “solutions” can often make the problem infinitely worse. Worse to the point you throw up your hands and just rebuild from scratch, which most certainly did NOT want to do. Part of the problem is that “solutions” can come from anyone in the community: seasoned pros, or first-time amateurs. Most don’t document what they are doing very well, and so you make assumptions… and get in worse trouble.

The Linux Model solution is to try and find an authoritative source. Usually this means contacting the team that developed the “thing” that’s broken. Often (and again a failing of the open Linux Model) the team has moved on to other things and really doesn’t care or maintain the broken thing. In such cases, you are pretty much hooped unless you can get the code and love delving into ancient artifacts.

It also requires a LOT of digging in many cases to find the team, or else… EXPERIENCE knowing where to look.

Fortunately, I was beginning to obtain that experience. (and NO, it’s most definiely NOT the group of Stack Overflow websites, but that opinion is for another day). After starting with Jupyter Hub, I began noticing that a lot of the projects were hosted on github.com. I’ve used github before, but only to download/install things. With Jupyter, I began noticing a lot of activity happening on the “Issues” tab. Here I discovered the magic: if the project was active, the developers READ the issues and would comment/reply.

Knowing this, I returned to my C++ problem. I found the package on github, and used issues to contact the team with my problem…. “it’s busted” but stated more “unix like” 😀

Within an hour one of the developers contacted me to say they’d changed the way they distributed the package for the very reason I mentioned (C++ library problems). They rewrote the distribution and moved the code from a custom source to the Conda standard source “conda-forge”. However, the old code was still “out there”. I was told to grab the new code and it shoudl work.

I did this, and it didn’t work. However, having chatted with a developer, I simply updated my “Issue”. The next day I received a reply: remove EVERYTHING from the old distro source. Using “conda list” I could clearly see MANY packages (not just the base C++ package) came from the “now bad source”. After removing all of them and reinstalling the main package from the proper source (conda-forge), I tried my C++ example and it worked perfectly.

So the Linux Model does work, but you have to do a lot more homework and find the place where the developers’ hang out with the current code.

For Tomcat, that’s the Tomcat-users or Tomcat-devel list group. For my 8-bit computer replicas, that place is some specific google groups. For most things involving Jupyter Hub, that place is the appropriate github.com repo (and the Issues tab).

My final thought for now on the Linux Model is that it does work for almost anything current. The big bonus is there is often a HUGE community of active developers who really want their work to be appreciated and used. Find them, and ask properly worded respectful questions, and you can see the Model work beautifully.