Linux

[Thomas Mondoshawan Tate]

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On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 12:28:20AM -0700, der.hans wrote:
> Am 26. Sep, 2001 schw=E4tzte Thomas Mondoshawan Tate so:
>=20
> > My own brew. Although technicially it's Linux From Scratch, but I've ma=
de so
> > many changes to it I'd hardly call it such. The reason: less bloat, less
> > dependencies, it runs what I want and not what the creators want, and
> > upgrading portions of the system isn't as time consuming as it would be
> > under a package based system. Eg: if I need to update libc, all I have =
to do
> > is download, ./configure, make, make install, and I'm done -- no broken
> > dependencies anywhere. Albeit, this kind of distro is not for those with
> > heart conditions or those who are new to Linux since it's source-level
> > "package management" feature requires a pretty heavy understanding of h=
ow
> > the packages fit together.
>=20
> Install the base system.
>=20
> Decide what you want.
>=20
> Setup sources.list.
>=20
> # apt-get update
> # apt-get install <devel_environment>
> # apt-get install pentium-builder # forces pentium optimized compilation[=
1]
> # apt-get -b source foo # automagically builds foo from the source package
>=20
> If that bitches about something not being available, then:
>=20
> # apt-get -b source something
>=20
> There's also 'apt-get build-dep foo' that will get the binary packages
> needed for build dependencies.
>=20
> ciao,
>=20
> der.hans
>=20
> [1] Certainly things could be tweaked for auto optimization for other
> environs as well.

I don't doubt the fact that apt-get is a useful and incredibly powerful tool
for package management, but I've got a question for you: if compilation
of a particular package fails, what does it do?

RPM tried this idea a while back with source RPMs. Unfortunately, virtually
every time I attempted to build one of those suckers, the durn thing would
explode with a compilation error, so I'd have to build the package from
source myself. This created a discrepency in the package database -- RPM
didn't know I had installed package "foo", but I really had from source.

The only problem I really have with automated package management systems is
their inability (from what I've seen so far -- I've not had experience with
apt-get yet, so correct me if I'm wrong) to control the compilation process
with the _users_ preferences and the inability to recover from a compilation
error.

--=20
Thomas "Mondoshawan" Tate
phoenix@psy.ed.asu.edu
http://tank.dyndns.org

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