On 03/12 08:17 , Les Mikesell wrote: > 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.
In 99% of the cases I've seen with Debian, the distro's package is done better than I could do it myself. With RPM the figure is slightly worse; but we're getting pretty far OT here. > > - 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. Only to ones for which there is no distribution package. This happens. Even so, it's still worth building a package for all the other reasons here. > > - 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. Fair enough. I've usually found that Debian has a package that's already built with those options tho; or is close enough that it's not worth the extra trouble of maintaining software outside the package system. YMMV. > > - 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. I've done it; and while it's painful at times, at least it's *possible*. Packages allow you to track down all the files associated with a given piece of software; so you aren't leaving things all over your filesystem which may come back to bite you at some point in the future. > Yes, you really don't want to manage very many non-packaged programs, > but a few aren't a big problem I try not to get on slippery slopes. :) > and building locally allows you to stay > versions ahead or behind the distro-packaged one according to your needs This is true, and there are times you need to do this. For those instances, build your own package. Your fellow administrators, and your successors, will thank you. :) (As a consultant I've had to clean up entirely too many machines which had lots of software installed from source; and quite often the policy is to re-install the whole OS because that was the best way to put the machine back to a known state). -- Carl Soderstrom Systems Administrator Real-Time Enterprises www.real-time.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 [email protected] List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
