debugging in a complex system of inter-related components

Johnathan Rochkind wrote a good description of the complexity involved in trying to fix linking problems: "But this got me thinking again about something I’ve been thinking about for a while, the added difficulty of tracking down bugs in the complex inter-related ‘chains’ of software that more and more are responsible for providing our library services — chains of software from various sources, hosted in various places, open source and licensed and free-with-no-contractual-support whatsoever ..." continued