[plug] Easy Installation: Linux Desktop Market

[Craig Ringer]

Mr Shayne wrote:
> 
> Well, If someone is encouraging people to install software via tarballs 
> or non .deb schemes on a debian system, its plainly bad advice. It means 
> that the packager doesnt understand the file system anymore, and cant 
> make "informed" decisions about dependancy management. Its a recipe for 
> tears later down the track.

To an extent, yes, in that if you upgrade the Debian system it might 
upgrade libraries to versions that won't work with the software you 
compiled, breaking that software.

It won't hurt the rest of your system, though, and no harm is done; I 
fail to see how it's really an issue.

After all, if they've installed a .deb version of a package directly 
(rather than from a repository) and Debian can't find an upgrade, it'll 
just refuse to upgrade it. It'll probably also offer to remove it when 
you dist-upgrade so it can upgrade the libraries the package depends on. 
Anybody who's used third-party KDE builds for Debian knows what I'm 
talking about ;-)

Personally, I'd go absolutely nuts if any distro forced me to install 
everything through its package management scheme. I frequently need to 
do test builds, or bundle up a newer version of some software with a 
couple of libraries I don't want the rest of the system to be affected 
by (such as a BDB 4 with different configure options). Similarly, I 
sometimes want to use konstruct or a similar tool to build and maintain 
a current or CVS version of a major suite of apps I don't want to risk 
messing up my main system with. Being unable to isolate this sort of 
work would be infuriating - I actively don't want the package manager to 
know about what I'm doing.

To me, the only really dumb thing is to configure an app you're 
installing manually to install into the /usr tree. /opt or /usr/local 
are there for a reason, and it's often not a great idea to be treading 
all over the package manager's domain. It might well overwrite some of 
the files you've installed later - but often not all - causing all sorts 
of special fun down the track.

--
Craig Ringer