David Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Yeah, I know, but then I compile plenty of stuff from scratch rather than
> rely on RPMs. The real reason I haven't switched is because it's really
The drawback with 'make install' from source is that it doesn't write a
database of files owned by that source package which is the great
advantage of binary packages. So you can't use do 'make uninstall' to
cleanly remove the program if you don't like or use it. This is
basically what the *BSD ports system does.
It should be possible to write some wrapper for GNU configure to add a
'make uninstall' to the Makefile. In the absence of this I usually
type 'script' to log whats installed at the 'make install' stage..
> *nasty* trying to switch from one distro to another without a) losing
> valuable config data and b) ending up with a ton of unused junk on the disk
The way to handle UNIX configuration files is like software and use
RCS. On every system you can then type one command 'locate ,v' to see
all your local changes. You can then systematically port config
changes to the new distribution.
> which is nigh-on impossible to tell apart from stuff that's in use.
It's a one liner to display files that haven't been used in the last
three months using 'find -atime'. Other advantage of binary package
managers is you can then go ahead and delete large chunks of your OS
that you never use and it should warn you if it breaks other stuff.
--
1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott [EMAIL PROTECTED]
if we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research,
would it? - albert einstein
