Re: Pine 3.93

[jwt@example.com (Jim Tittsler)]

>I'm getting a bit confused here playing around with debian.  On RedHat do 
>you have to install everything with the RPM?  What if you don't?  Does 
>the index of installed programs get messed up?

If you install something that is not in RPM form, they recommend
using RPM to remove the original, and then install the new program
by hand... usually in /usr/local/* with links as necessary.  That
way, if you latter *do* install an RPM, it won't break anything
you've installed (beyond the links).

It also turns out that once you have a working template of a "SPECS"
file, you can take a typical source archive and turn it into an RPM
pretty quickly should you want to.

>[...]  I guess both RedHat and Debian have program managers,
>but I don't see the advantage of a program manager yet.

For me, it makes keeping up with some of the various support/utility
packages a lot easier.  I don't care about the details, I can update
in a single command line (even getting the source directly from an
FTP site, were I connected by dial-up IP).