tlug: RH mixing rpms and source

["Thomas O'Dowd" <tom@example.com>]

Dear tluggers,

This is a RedHat specific question although other distributions do apply.
How do people usually keep on the bleeding edge of software releases and
still keep the rpm system happy?

For example say, I wanna download the latest XFree86 4.x and there is no
rpm available for Redhat yet, but say that I need 4.x for my video card.
What do I do to install it? This package comes with a binary distribution
but if it didn't I could just compile it. So how about the install? 

Do I a) force remove the rpm for the 3.x packages as my system won't really
be a 3.x system anymore and then install the binaries b) leave the packages
in place and install over them, that way rpm is happy but inaccurate. The
problem is not really that the installation of X breaks but rather the next 
rpm package that you wanna install that looks for rpms of a X installation.
If I took method a) then I'm going to have to forever force future installs
or compile everything from source which is undesirable if you can get it
prepackaged. I guess c is to make a rpm for the new version but this is
not really desirable either.

How do most people handle development code on their systems? (We're speaking
about home boxes here and not production) Most peoples systems comes with
release versions of libraries already, but if you need to update core 
libraries because a developers package that you want to run requires it,
you're kinda left with these choices. It seems like if you deviate
at all from rpm for a core package, then you're left forever force loading
most rpms until you install a new RH release and get to do it all over again.

Cheers,

Tom.
-- 
Thomas O'Dowd
tom@example.com
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