I'd like to give my opinion and 2 cents worth to this topic, even if I'm not a regular member or contributor. I've been reading the forums more regularly recently.
I came across LFS 3 - 4 years ago, when I got upset with all other distributions that I had tried. Upset mainly because of their PM systems. But not so much their functionality (Debian's apt is great), but because of their dependency resolution, or lack thereof. Now, by lack thereof I don't mean that they don't resolve; they do, but the dependencies, especially for packages like GNOME or KDE, are horrendous, and not all of them necessary, as the BLFS book shows. Personally, I want a lean, fast and stable system, and when I add an application, I don't want to add 20 others, because there might be some optional things, etc. Even if you use a PM to add kdebase or the gnome core packages, you'll see an enormous list of dependencies and upon checking, you'll find that you don't need all of them. But the result is that your system gets bloated and runs more and more processes. One of the main reasons that I come back to LFS all the time and rebuild, because I've tried so many distros and none of them has really convinced me with regards to PM package dependencies. So even though the educational benefits of learning how to build LFS and a Linux system in general, aren't that big anymore, I still prefer LFS. But admittedly, I don't always have the time to rebuild or build new packages and optional applications and using a PM is more comfortable and quicker. Personally, I've tried DESTDIR and it works fine, except for the odd packages that ignore it. Because of that, when I can't be bothered investigating whether a package supports it or not, I fall back to simply building the package in the normal way and then just looking at the difference in files created on the file system. Yes, maybe not the most advanced way, but it works smoothly. Takes a bit more time because you have to wait a bit between builds, but hey. And I've created and am still creating scripts to automate builds and that will resolve build dependencies. Works well, except for the dependencies yet. My thoughts after that were to create some kind of PM, whether source based or binary based or both. With regards to whether or not a PM should be part of LFS, I am taking the pragmatic approach. So, it doesn't necessarily have to. I would almost go as far as to say that the Linux world is spoiled by having a PM (while I am aware that this is probably one of the reasons why it has grown in popularity), because look at Windows or Mac OS X. Where's their PM? And people are still using these OSs. Mac OS X is a great OS, and it comes pre-packaged with most things you need. If you want more, you go and search and find it (yes, I know there's fink, etc.). OK, this might be a bit OT, but I wanted to give my input here as well, as I'm trying to give more to the LFS community. I've actually had thoughts of going towards an LFS based distribution, because I'm getting so upset with other distros, that would offer you a lean and fast environment, with a DE of choice and all the necessary applications to do your day to day business. But not five of each ... I don't want/need 5 different word processors or chat applications or the like; just want one that works well and is well integrated. Part of that distro could be a PM, although I personally don't think that to be so much of a big topic, if the rest of the distro offers everything you need, is not bloated and runs smoothly. Any thoughts on this welcome and I hope I didn't intrude on this topic too much. _______________________________________________________________________ Jetzt neu! Schützen Sie Ihren PC mit McAfee und WEB.DE. 3 Monate kostenlos testen. http://www.pc-sicherheit.web.de/startseite/?mc=022220 -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
