[Tfug] package/repository confusion

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 07:24:35PM -0700, christopher floess wrote:
>> You can always download the source and compile it if you are having problem
>> finding a pre-compiled binary for your distribution.
>
>Doesn't this create problems if a package needs a newer version of the
>source-compiled package?
>
>Or is there a way to make the package manager aware of what you've installed?

Generally, no.  If you want to make things simple and easy to maintain, avoid
source compiled libraries if at all possible.

The reason is just as you said.  Your package manager won't know that xmlrpc-c
exists at all.  This means you can't use our package manager to upgrade it
and, more so, it means that your package manager won't recognize any xmlrpc-c
dependencies as having been met.  However, in your case the latter is unlikely
since if the repository does not have xmlrpc-c there it shouldn't have
anything that depends on it.

Compiling program binaries from source is much less of an issue since other
programs are far less likely to depend on them than on libraries.

Personally, I use Debian/Ubuntu and try to stick with packages unless
absolutely necessary (i.e. it's not available, or I really need feature X to
be supported/enabled).  For Debian, working this was isn't too hard because
the repository is enormous.  This is slightly less true for Ubuntu, but many
Debian packages that don't come with Ubuntu can often be used without any
issues.

I can't speak for the ease of use of other distros as I haven't used anything
RPM based in quite some time.  My last experience was with RHEL version 3 and
that wasn't much fun at all.


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--John Gruenenfelder    Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
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