On 10/07/12 08:03 AM, Muhammad Yousuf Khan wrote:
This is a very basic question but confusing me for very long. so i
need your help.
why people do compiling. i have heard many time that people are
compiling kernel on debian.
what is the reason for this? i am using debian for almost 1.5 year and
have been using it on different platform in CLI mode. but no need of
compiling in this time window.
secondly i have read that people are compiling Squid SAMBA and all
the other packages but why. i am using KVM, squid samba etc for
almost more then 1 year and all the servers are providing me what ever
i asled all the services are very comprehensive and could be fit in
any environment then why compiling?
Thanks,
There is little need to compile code. In fact, doing so will probably
have a negative impact on your system's stability, especially if you use
other than the official sources.
People who prepare the individual packages or distributions are usually
the only ones who need to compile code. However, some brave/foolhardy
souls must have the latest code from the developer's source and compile
their own. This is invariably a bad idea.
When you leave the safety of your distribution's code repositories, you
become responsible for managing the various inter-dependencies between
programs and libraries. This is not a trivial task.
If you need later code than is available from the official repositories,
look for backports or, in the case of Debian, move to testing. In the
testing repositories you get up to date code that is somewhat stable for
non-critical work.
Compiling from the official sources is a slightly different issue. For
example, some people will compile a custom kernel from the official
sources to do one of several things:
- create a kernel that doesn't need an initramfs - everything is built in
- create a smaller kernel that contains only the options they need -
rendering it non-portable
- creating a kernel with non-standard options for a particular situation.
Other code may need similar tweaking. I once compiled a CUPS driver for
a printer to include a bug fix I needed that hadn't made it into SID yet.
However, these situations are rare. For the vast majority of people,
compiling is something you shouldn't worry about. The package
maintainers do a great job of getting everything to work together
properly. Don't undermine their work.
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