On 8/17/05, Erik Steffl <steffl@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > ? essentially I agree but why would uninstalling a program that was > installed into ONE directory under /opt be a problem? There were > obviously NO modifications to the system outside of that directory (I > usually make sure of it by not installing as root) If you don't use the approach described earlier (each software in its own directory), and use configure --prefix=/usr/local instead, after you install several programs there, you will have many files in /usr/local/bin, many files in /usr/local/lib, etc.... So you have no ways to remove only one software. If you use one directory per software, then the problem is different (except concerning the configuration files which go under ~ ). > > Basically, installing from sources without the help of the package > > manager is ok if nothing depends on what you are installing. It > > quickly become unmanageable if other softwares depend on it. I found > > checkinstall much more robust. > > yeah, but installing into /opt/package-version works on pretty much > all unix(like) OSs regardless of what package system you use. You're > right that it's not a good general solution but it's pretty handy for > small-scale installations (few programs and/or libs). Plus since > everything goes into one directory you're pretty sure that the rest of > the system is not affected (not sure how good is checkinstall in this > area, it tries to check what the install did but I'd rather have install > NOT touch the rest of the system, whether under supervision or not). I am not a specialist of package management, but I know I installed some big package from source with it (mono, for example), and it worked flawlessly. I could remove it afterwards to fall back on an official version. I don't know if it depends on the package system, but with debian packages, one package cannot overwrite a file from an other package, except if you force it. That means for example that there is little chance to destroy an existing package using a bleeding edge version compiled from source and packaged by checkinstall. Ideally, you should use an special user for testing big packages from sources (to avoid destroying some configuration files). David
