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Re: SRPM



On Fri, 6 Feb 1998, Stanislav Malyshev a.k.a. Frodo wrote:

> >for them (almost all of Caldera and RH users, that is those who do not go 
> >the sane way of recompiling almost everything from the sources, such as
>      ^^^^
> >Ira for example).
> Are you kidding? You really think I (or busy administrator of tens of
> machines, which for my luck I am not ;) have nothing to do but get all the
> things installed from the source? What for? If you need to install
> webserver, you customise it and compile it, but if you need to install 20
> little programs, it would  be much saner just to rpm them (in the ideal

You are forgetting that you do this just once. It takes about 2 work days
to recompile every piece of software that will see public use on a Linux
system (servers, kernel, setup scripts, utilities used by CGI and login at
least, log system, and a permissions and security audit as far as one can
be done). Of course the real reson is to test the executables, and to
apply the latest patches. Then the configuration can be cloned to as many
systems as you wish. The 'other' systems get a skeleton installation which
does the partitions, a kernel, networking code (no X), and start inetd
with / exported for rw and telnetd at least. After that, you sit at the
one configured system and the kids suck data over the network. You may
play Tetris to keep you busy. 

> case that one who did RPMs didn't screw it... And RH doesn't screw small
> things too much. And if it does - well, there is many others)...

Correct.

> Ideally, sane program from sane packager doesn't need recompilation at
> all, all customisation via configs. 

Depends on what can be config'ed by configs. Many standard utilities need
to be recompiled to get special options and security stuff into them.

> Except that you are over-paranoid, but then it's good for you to review
> the sources also, and when you get the time to *work*, remains unclear.
> Also, I would like you to imagine how much time would take to build full
> production/development environment from sources... Even on one machine...
> It sounds very cool, take sources and compile, but when you need it
> to be time-effective, good packages is the sanest thing I can imagine.

Correct, however human beings make mistakes. Your packager is a human
being. Will you trust shrink-wrapped plastic blindly because 100,000
people haven't complained ?

BIAS WARNING: I am in the repair business. I make my living out of other
people's mistakes. It's not a bad business <G>

> About slackware: my linux is of slackware origin ;) so I used slackware
> packages for a time... Believe me, I was really happy to get rid of
> them... It was too messy. Dunno, maybe it got better, but how it was then
> - RPM beats it with hands tied and eyes closed. Really hope they've got
> some package management mechanism for now...

Again: The slackware install script is as good as it was written. Most
slackware scripts are as simple as one could make them. A script is a
general purpose computer program. It can do ANYTHING you want it to. 
Remember that it runs as root. An archiver like rpm can only do what its
makers built into it. 

Peter