On Tue, 2002-10-15 at 01:19, Muhammad Akhtar wrote: > So is Jesse's comment "Trying to stay source, on a rpm based distro is just asking > for trouble." right or not? > > Coming from a Slackware (which i haven't left behind by the way...), i am used to > compiling from source and prefer that cos you can assign your own flags to explicitly > include or exclude things and build your package to suit your needs that perhaps an > rpm wouldn't do. Am i right? > > And why would building from source be "asking for trouble", on an rpm based distro? The trouble can come in if you don't account for you app/library/whatever in the RPM database. If you install from source, your RPM database no longer has a complete picture of your system, which means it can make mistakes installing or deleting future RPM packages. For example, if you have compiled a library from source that another packages needs, RPM won't know it's already installed and will insist that you install the library again (from an RPM package). The solution is a program called checkinstall: http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/ It takes standard source, creates a basic RPM .spec file and builds an RPM for you to keep your RPM database up to date. This also makes it easy to later uninstall your package using "rpm -e" instead of hoping the source package author set up a "make uninstall" target. By the way, checkinstall can also created slackware TGZs and Debian DEBs. It fills and gaping hole in all major package managements systems. Best Regards, Keith -- LPIC-2, MCSE, N+ Life's the same, except for my shoes Got spam? Get spastic http://spastic.sourceforge.net -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
