Les Mikesell wrote:
> On 9/17/2010 2:15 PM, m.roth@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>
>>>> How to download, md5sum check, unpack, configure and
>>>> compile a GPL *.tar.gz package.
>>>>
>>>> As SysAdmin that's something they will need to do sooner or
>>>> later :)
>>>
>>> But it's much more important to know all the reasons *not* to do that
>>> except as a last resort. Reasons that someone who has had to maintain
>>> and update such things for decades will know that won't occur to an
>>> inexperienced beginner. You can summarize by saying "yum update is a
>>> lot easier".
>>
>> Excerpt when a user comes to you and asks you to install a package for
>> which there isn't any rpm... or, for that matter, when you're force to
>> use CPAN to install a module for which there's no .rpm, and then the build
>> fails, but works if you cd into /root/.cpan/BUILD/<pgmsource> and
>> make....
>
> Agreed that it's good to know how - but 'there isn't any rpm' should
> really mean there isn't any rpm at any well-maintained location, not
> just in the base system or that you didn't bother to look. Every time
> you build something yourself you are taking on the job of maintaining it
> forever and probably leaving people in a lurch when you leave and
> someone else has to figure out what non-standard things you did.
Um, no. Sometimes users want stuff that no one *has* built a package for,
and I'm certainly not going to. Perhaps you work in a more structured
environment, where all the servers are the same. Ain't the case in a lot
of places I've worked, and certainly not here (here being where I work
now, and who I ->may not<- imply that I speak for, contract regs, federal
regs...).
And, of course, you'd *better* document what you did and how you did it,
and put that in a well-known location, such as the organization's wiki....
mark
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