[plug] re opening linuxconf

[The Thought Assassin]

On Sun, 6 May 2001, Beau Kuiper wrote:

> And get off your high horse, since I have a job too.

You can probably tell from the ;) that I was pulling your leg. :)

> But why bother with a packaging system at all. The main advantages to
> packaging systems are:

> 1) Dependancies are managed for you. But somethings this can burn you too.
>    Start installing your own libraries and packages outside this system,
>    and you are left in a situation where a package may require dependacies
>    which you installed manually, but the packaging system knows nothing
>    about.

How does that stop you from installing a copy under the packaging system?

> 2) Every program on the system is cataloged and packages can be quickly
>    removed and installed. Start installing programs manually and you lose
>    this ability.

You don't _lose_ anything - those other apps will still be fine you just
don't gain from the package manager when you don't use it. (obviously)

> 3) Upgrading packages. Even though the packaging system can upgrade your
>    package, it cannot garrentee that every dependant package will continue
>    to work. Older package systems can't even upgrade many packages because
>    other programs are dependant on that specific version.

I thought you said you'd used Debian? This is not a very common complaint
with Debian, though I'm aware it's been be a problem for other distros.

<and one more advantage snipped.>

OK, those are some of the advantages.

> The main advantages to not bothering with packaging systems are.
>
> 1) You can compile and install anything, even if no-one bothered to make a
>    package for it.

You can do that on a package-managed system, too.

>    Using the packaging system to do this is a pain because
>    you have to create the package yourself, and determine where it fits,
>    what dependancies it has, ect. This has the disadvantage of allowing
>    you to trash your system if you are not careful.

There is no obligation to make your own package. Just install it in ~ or
/usr/local like you would on your slackware system.

> 2) You can upgrade libraries easily. You can also break lots of programs
>    easily too, if you are not careful.

I can't imagine any way in which manually upgrading libraries is easier.
Was this meant to be in the other list?

> 3) You can change the compile configuration easily. You can easily do
>    funky things like install samba twice on the same machine into
>    different subtrees (which requires changes in compile time options,
>    for log files ect.)

You can do this on a package-managed system, too, and you can retain some
of the benefits of package-management by compiling the modified versions
from the source package.


All of the advantages of manual compilation/installation that you mention
can be enjoyed when compiling manually on a package-managed system. None
of the advantages of package-management go away when you do these things,
except sometimes for the manually-installed programs themselves. I don't
see any reason not to do one's manual compilation/installation on a
package-managed base.

-Greg Mildenhall