Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:
> Some questions have been raised about installing from source vs. installing
> from a package and why I don't believe it's good to install directly from
> source. I will post my reasons here.
I agree in general, but I look at it as more of a question of whether I
expect the packaged version to be managed better than I would do it myself.
> I will first point out that nothing prevents you from building your own
> package. It's not that difficult to build your own package from scratch if
> need be; but usually on Debian and often on Red Hat there's a source package
> available to be modified if you'd like to compile software your own way.
>
> The reasons for installing from a package (even one you compiled yourself)
> are:
>
> - It allows you to easily know when a security patch is available, by using
> one of the managers like apt, up2date, yum, etc.
That doesn't apply to ones you build yourself.
> - It allows you to install the exact same software binary to all your
> machines. (If you were to compile from source there's a good chance for
> human error to creep in and compile things differently on different
> machines, leading to subtle errors which are _really_ hard to track down).
But, sometimes the differences that happen when you build locally are
planned by the software author any you lose features in a
one-size-fits-all build.
> - It allows you to install software faster (this is a big consideration when
> managing dozens or hundreds of machines).
For this scenario, rolling your own package might be worthwhile - if you
determine that the local variations aren't important.
> - It allows you to roll back to a previous version easily, if the new one
> breaks things.
I haven't found that to be the case with RPM's with dependencies.
> - It gives you more assurance that the software will be compatible with your
> already-existing software (Debian's quality control is much better than
> mine would be).
Agreed here.
> I've managed machines without these features, and it's truly a
nightmare. If
> you have one administrator, only a few machines, and enough time, you can do
> it without packages. If you have several administrators, many machines, and
> not enough time to do everything you'd like to, then packages are a
> lifesaver.
Yes, you really don't want to manage very many non-packaged programs,
but a few aren't a big problem and building locally allows you to stay
versions ahead or behind the distro-packaged one according to your needs
and you can make local changes easily. For example I like my backuppc to
be mostly self-contained under /opt/backuppc for easy replication to a
disk usable elsewhere. And backuppc is really just a perl script...
--
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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