Re: source builds vs. RPMs

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Richard,

Richard Jones wrote:
> > Where does the thinking come from that "there must be only one instance
> > of every package"?
> ...
> My experience of the goodness of packaging systems comes from my use
> of OSes like Minix and FreeBSD which don't have good (or any)
> packaging systems, and require complete reinstallation after a short
> period of time once the layers of cruft from multiple 'make install'
> commands have built up.

Mike Frysinger wrote:
> packages install way too much cruft that changes over versions to sanely 
> track 
> without a PM, and `make uninstall` is way too inconsistent and "helpful" to 
> even think about trusting.

The solution to this problem is the 'Nix' package manager <http://nixos.org/>.
It allows you have multiple versions or builds of a package installed, while
at the same time having clear boundaries and clean uninstalls.

I personally have been using a different --prefix for most package
installations; you can call it a "poor man's Nix" approach.

> > Where does the thinking come from that it is bad to have something not
> > recognized by the package system?
> 
> The packaging system manages security updates, that's one very big
> reason.

Indeed, if you want security updates, just building from source with
"./configure && make && make install" will not provide them to you
automatically.

I'm not sure how we can address this issue?

Bruno