Article: In Defense of Omnibus Packages

[jhermann]

Write a piece showing that people's reservations regarding security updates are a) not that valid in the age of CI/CD and b) the extra work of fragmented single-packages releases is also an impediment to updates. And… Docker (that's a big omnibus with a whole OS).

Pros and Cons

• ⊕ Dependencies not predetermined (by target OS)
• ⊕ Multi-platform deployment way easier
• ⊕ Much simpler release process
• ⊖ Maintainer is responsible for security
• ⊖ Possibly more version variation in production
• ⓘ Security updates might be slower – or faster
• ⓘ Efficiency often dominates other concerns (esp. with deploying in-house tools)