On Mon, 2011-11-14 at 00:25 -0700, Bob Proulx wrote: > Ralf Mardorf wrote: > > Richard wrote: > > > Bob Proulx wrote: > > > > I have used alien and been into the guts of it and after really > > > > wanting it to work I was always disappointed. It sounds like a cool > > > > idea. I wanted it to work. But it just can't work perfectly because > > > > packages from different systems have different policies. The tool > > > > can't be smart enough to understand the policies of both systems and > > > > do the right thing in a sentient way. It is the policy differences > > > > that case the problems. That doesn't mean that there are some good > > > > examples where it works fine though. > > > > Using alien I got the 32-bit lightscribe driver, 32-bit SimpleLabeler > > and Lacie's 32-bit 4l running on my 64-bit testing. > > That's great! Happy it worked for you. I didn't say it didn't ever > work. I said that *I* always ran into cases where it didn't work due > to policy differences between the distributions. > > But without looking at the components you mentioned I will dare to say > that I am sure that the alien installed packages are still not in any > way up to the install quality levels expected from a native Debian > package. I bet that if I looked at the way that alien ended up > installing them on a system that I wouldn't be happy with it. > > > Building packages with checkinstall instead of installing software by > > make install works for RPM and DEB based systems. > > Hence compiling FLOSS might be smarter than using RPM for Debian. > > Often very true. Often it is easier to build and install to > /usr/local initially and then clean that up later when a nice packaged > version shows up. For many tools and utilities that works out great. > > However for components such as GNOME that are large and somewhat > involved that is easier said than done. It isn't too terribly hard to > build it. Especially if you start with the packaged versions and work > from there. But it isn't completely trivial either. > > > Sometimes checkinstall don't build a package, e.g. if scons is used, > > anyway, usually it does what it should do, you hardly will find exotic > > scons stuff and similar. > > I take it that you had a bad experience with a scons package? I > haven't used scons but if it didn't build then there would probably be > help available for it. > > Bob
Yes, building GNOME would be too time consuming. Compiling with scons is ok here, but automagically building packages isn't possible for me. - Ralf -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1321261789.3048.2.camel@debian