Re: [tlug] Installing from source versus packages

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

This comment isn't directly relevant to Dave, I suppose.

>>>>> "Erin" == GMO Unix Erin D Hughes <erin-hughes@example.com> writes:

    Erin> On Mon, 2006-06-19 at 23:20 -0400, Jim wrote:

    >> Erin D. Hughes wrote:

    >>> You may be able to build a source rpm but if you will go
    >>> through all that then why not just install from source.

    >> Stuff that is installed outside the packaging system can be
    >> difficult to maintain. For a production machine this is
    >> significant. It's better to work within the packaging system
    >> and make the SRPMs and RPMs.

    Erin> Agreed 100% but this is a FC1 box running a 2.6.x kernel and
    Erin> MySQL 5.0..... they left packages and management a long time
    Erin> ago most likely....

My experience with rpm (very limited) and dpkg (extensive) is that the
.spec or debian/rules distributed by most upstream projects are
sufficiently generic to work across many distros, let alone versions.
Then configure weeds out most dependency bugs (like "need glibc 3.2 or
later").  There's rarely a reason to work outside the package system
(the !"#$$% Debian Emacs Policy is a very good one, I'll admit, but
that's unusual).  Definitely not "it's extra work" -- if the rpm
--build command doesn't DTRT, it's not likely you'll have an easy row
to hoe with ./configure; make; make install, either.

That litmus test is of equal importance to me to the management
features of querying my package and checking file ownership conflicts,
etc.


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