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Re: new debian packages - what iss so good about Unix/X
On Thu, 22 May 1997, Shay Rojansky wrote:
> > Do you remember Ira's contrib Perl accident?
> > His system was screwed AFAIR. I built rpms package myself and
> > I know that it is easy to make rpm, and it is very easy
> > to make it the way it will screw something because your
> > lack of knowlegde. I hope original rpms form RH are more safe
> > than mine :{)
>
> What does Ira's contrib Perl accident have to do with rpm? He could
> have installed it by compiling the sources and screwed up his system
> just the same way. Besides, that's exactly why it's called 'contrib'.
It just shows what rpm does to ppl :{)
It makes you blindly click on rpm to install it without
checking what it will do exactly.
When such expirianced SysAdmin such as Ira ( haida Ira )
makes such an error what can we say about ordinary users.
I personnally first look into Makefile and only after that
type 'make install', especially on productive server !
> > Most modern programs come with autoconf/imake or some similar
> > tool, with wich you can easily compile it on almost any
> > known Unix platform.
>
> Yeah, right. I'm sorry, but from my experience with source distributions
> I'd much prefer a tested, stable binary distribution if there is one.
> Which is exactly what Debian and Red Hat are trying to create.
I compiled a lot of program starting with pine and vim and till perl.
It is not so hard if even I can do it :{)
I can not imagine how you can rpm install such thing as for example
sshd or perl there are zilion compile options, which are very important.
> > I'm not saying that everybody should compile gcc or XFree,
> > but binary packages IMHO should come in tar.gz So I can use
> > it in any system. After all what is package - it is binary files +
> > dependencies files + installation scripts. I know a lot of people
> > who had to install rpm in non RH Linuces just to install some RPM
> > package, which comes without source.
>
> So you're passing up dependencies and installation scripts like that!
> I cannot think of a development that made my life easier in the near
> past more than package dependancies. All the mess that used to
> dominate my machine was reduced to almost complete order. Not that
> I can't make it chaotic if I want to.
As I already told, I'm talking about FreeBSD model.
When you compile for example AfterStep, Makefile downloads
xpm as a dependency.
I first met dependencies in FreeBSD ( I used Slackware than )
and it was and is wonderfull!
>
> > Did you know that....
> > - You can install FreeBSD, without CD, from *ONE* floppy
> > by ftp/ppp?
>
> So can RH, if I remember correctly. Furthermore, RH can install
> WITHOUT floppyies if you have the CD and DOS running (with
> autoboot, using the initrd ramdrive).
AFAIK RedHat can be instlled by ftp only with ethernet, wich I
personally do not have at home :{) So it makes this option really useless
to me and for most home users.
FreeBSD can be installed by ftp also via ppp and via ethernet and via any
other medium.
FreeBSD also can be installed directly from CD, but I never had one
because I did not need to. I ( and many of my friends ) always install
FreeBSD by ftp/ppp
>
> > - You can synchronize your whole system source code ( not only
> > kernel ) with any FreeBSD branch -stable -current or any other?
>
> Which is kind of like upgrading your binary distributions by
> popping in the next Redhat release CD. Expect that you don't get
> the sources (so get the srpms).
Apropo RH 4.2 is out. How exactly can I stay up to day without downloading
the whole release or buying a CD?
>
> > - You can recompile the whole system ( not only kernel ) by just
> > 'make world'
>
> I don't want to sound mean, but if you have the space to contain
> the entire FreeBSD sources on your hard disk, FreeBSD must be very
> small ;-) And besides, where exactly does that become useful?
My whole FreeBSD partition is 800m, 300m of which are free.
About space. I just checked and /usr/src takes about 160M.
As I said it includes only OS itself. this meens only what you have
in /, /bin, /lib, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, etc. No /usr/local programs
such as emacs for example. For /usr/local programs ( or ports in
FreeBSD lang. ) I only need to have "deltas" from original source
packages. BTW there are *904* programs in FreeBSD *official* port
collection. And it takes only 30M on my hard drive. In RH where are much
less packages( I'm not talking about contrib )
About why to compile
First of all it is very sexy to compile to whole system
( at least if you find compiling kernel to be sexy )
Second of all it shows about FreeBSD design. In Linux you can not
recompile the whole system in one command, because Linux is not an OS.
It is kernel, with a lot of distributions. Some ppl make libc and other
ppl independantly make kernel. where is no synchronization, there is no
sytem source tree.
And third of all as I said it is wonderfull way to stay -current or
-stable. I once installed FreeBSD and since than I synchronize my source
code from cron every night, and 'make world' every friday night.
>
> Shay
>
> --
> Shay Rojansky, roji@cs.huji.ac.il Finger for PGP public key
>
>
Alexander Indenbaum
baum@actcom.co.il
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