On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 10:07:22AM +0200, John Colvin wrote: > On Monday, 16 September 2013 at 01:55:25 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote: > >On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 07:14:17PM +0200, Dicebot wrote: [...] > >>Not entirely true. You should never have anything not managed by > >>package manager on Linux system, it is a reliable road to disaster. > >>Better distinction is "/usr/" for packages from official repos, > >>"/usr/local" for own custom packages. > > > >Seriously? I installed unmanaged stuff all the time, and never had > >much of an issue. Though, granted, I never put them under /usr or > >/usr/local at all. It's usually in a dedicated subdirectory under > >$HOME. > > > >Installing unmanaged stuff under the /usr tree is tricky business, > >because when you're trying to *uninstall*, you usually don't remember > >where all the bits have been scattered, and leaving them lying around > >can lead to trouble. > > > > > >T > > Ever since watching a friend have his entire /usr deleted by a dodgy > 'sudo make install', i desperately avoid manually installing to > anywhere but a dedicated subdir in $home. No root access needed and > I actually know where everything is =)
Yeah, I don't trust random Makefiles I download over the 'Net. I usually put the source trees under /usr/src, which I use mainly for experimental stuff anyway, and since /usr is unwriteable by non-root, the worst a Makefile-gone-wrong can do is to nuke the entire /usr/src, while leaving everything else (esp. the all-important $HOME) intact. These days, though, I hardly ever even run make install anymore. Most apps (that I'm interested in, anyway) can be run as-is from the build directory, or if not, can be manually copied file-by-file to some dedicated target directory (the file list is hand-copied from the output of `make -n`, which also lets me know exactly *what* the thing actually does without actually doing it). Anything more complex than that, and I start weighing how badly I want that app vs. how little I trust it. Usually I don't care badly enough to actually install something that requires running a dodgy Makefile that takes a suspiciously long 20 seconds to install a mere 10-15 files. T -- They say that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people. -- Eddie Izzard, Dressed to Kill