On Wed, 2009-08-19 at 11:49 -0700, Steve Edwards wrote: > But, when the pain of using packages exceeds the hassle of the source, > I'll use the source without hesitation.
Agreed. I use trunk for MythTV, for instance, because there are features not in the latest packaged version that I really do need (VDPAU and HD-PVR support, for those who know about such things). And it's a pain to upgrade, which of course needs to be done relatively often when you are following the development version. So I do know how to do this and what's involved. But I'm not convinced I've reached that point yet with asterisk. It's true that I wouldn't need the development branch, but it's still more hassle to apply security fixes when compiling from source. And in this particular case, the conversion I am contemplating is one that is going to have to be done eventually. When the developers want to convert the config language, sooner or later they will stop supporting the old stuff and it won't be possible to get the newest supported features without converting. So I don't want to fall TOO far behind. I'd rather convert now when I can do it in a leisurely manner, before I absolutely HAVE to. > I don't like being dependent on others > for my mission critical stuff. Unless you are one of the developers, you're still dependent on others to maintain the source. Granted it does eliminate the folks in the middle doing the packaging. And in my case, nothing on my home server could really be described as "mission critical". It's closer to what the MythTV folks call the WAF (Wife Approval Factor :-) She likes the features that asterisk offers (separate voice mail boxes, phones in every room, intercom ability to call between phones, having a backup VOIP line out so we can make two calls at once, etc.) but none of that is critical to her use of the phone. We can live without asterisk for short periods of time, so it's not really "mission critical". I have an old-fashioned answering machine that will take messages if the computer fails to answer (it's crashed, asterisk isn't running, we've powered it off for a vacation, etc.) and I can patch the cordless phone base station through to the wallplate (although then the VOIP phones don't work). As always, in the end, we make a tradeoff between security concerns, reliability concerns, having the latest and greatest features, and ease of long-term maintenance. What that means exactly is determined on a case-by-case basis. In my case, I'll run the old system until I can find a way to convert to the versions packaged with Fedora 11 relatively quickly, to minimize my window of vulnerability and down time. Then for the longer term I'll work on the AEL conversion. I was just hoping to find something that would aid in that effort, but so far all I have seen are suggestions on how to avoid having to do it at all. --Greg > _______________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- AstriCon 2009 - October 13 - 15 Phoenix, Arizona Register Now: http://www.astricon.net asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users