Both the use of a package manager and compiling from source both have their places.
Personally, after years of installing everything from source, I now use packages for most software. There are a few pieces of software which aren't available in .debs, but it's fairly easy to roll your own from source once you get the hang of it. Debs, RPMs, or some other package format, and the associated tools, are almost mandatory if you manage more than 5 or so machines. And when you get to 100 or more, even some of the vendors' tools must be, ahem, coerced, to make them work well without babysitting them. The only things I install from source and don't create a .deb for are mission-critical server software. This includes things like imapd, my webmail server, and yes.. backuppc and backuppc4afs (http://backuppc4afs.sourceforge.net) </plug :-)> Those I just document to hell and back. Cheers, Stephen -- Stephen Joyce Systems Administrator P A N I C Physics & Astronomy Department Physics & Astronomy University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Network Infrastructure voice: (919) 962-7214 and Computing fax: (919) 962-0480 http://www.panic.unc.edu The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
