On 01/08/07, Roger Marquis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "Rajiv Gunja" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Source based application or patch deployment is good only for > > individual desktops and that too developer desktops, who know > > what they are doing, > > Thousands of FreeBSD server admins would strongly disagree agree > with this. I know I spend far less time keeping BSD ports up to > date than with binary RPMs. But please do explain, Rajiv, what > your experience with BSD ports is and why you believe they require > more technical knowledge than binary RPMs.
Thousands of FreeBSD servers pale in comparison to the number of GNU/Linux, Windows, Apple, and Solaris systems. Those systems prove that the binary model is a good one. The point is that binary configurations are the only ones that are truly supportable from a vendor perspective, since they have a known, dependable, signable, verifiable configuration. While I agree that having an easy way to customise and rebuild binaries for a given distribution would be nice, I do not believe that it should be the primary method of package distribution. The reality is that the overwhelming *majority* of admins are perfectly happy administering a set of packages that were not custom-built for them, but provided by a vendor. Again, I support the idea of making what you want to do easy, I just don't support that as being a replacement for a binary-based system, because it is not. There is little to no point in spending time recompiling every application, library, add-on, etc. unless you need a custom-built version. -- Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. " --Donald Knuth _______________________________________________ indiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss
