* Dave Miner (Dave.Miner at Sun.COM) wrote: > > > >Well, even if at the moment devel stuff is just noise, it will probably > >not be noise in the future... Just look at all linux distros, there is > >no reason to believe that solaris will go different path... > > > > My observation is that they go to great lengths to provide separate > packages, but it's not clear at all how much difference it makes in the > size of the installation when all's said and done. Anyone have actual > numbers on a current Fedora or something? And even then, does it make > much difference in whether someone chooses to install that distribution? > Hard to come by data on that one, I'd guess. > > What I do know is that it's a real pain to chase down all the things you > need once you decide that you need to compile something. Much profanity > usually ensues ;-), even if you have a comparatively sophisticated > package manager and fast, reliable network repositories from which to > install those additions.
I think that depends on the distribution. For example, on Ubuntu (based on Debian) installing a compiler and supporting build tools is as simple as: # apt-get install build-essential If you want to compile a source package (ie source for some program that's been packaged in source format for Ubuntu/Debian) it's: # apt-get install source foo # apt-get install build-dep foo The first command downloads the package source for foo. The second downloads and installs any dependencies that foo needs in order to compile. You can then build the source for foo. Pretty slick in practice. Now, this doesn't really help you too much if the source you want isn't available in the Ubuntu/Debian repositories. Cheers, -- Glenn Lagasse KISS/Approachability Sun Microsystems, Inc. x21293, 781-442-1293
