On Wed, 2006-04-05 at 03:25 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote: > Ralf Corsepius wrote: > > On Wed, 2006-04-05 at 00:06 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote: > > > >>Ralf Corsepius wrote: > > > > Once again, I say: You, want to build a source from sources, you, the > > installer, are better off writing an rpm spec for a package you want to > > install, instead of blindly running a "configure && make install", if > > you want to avoid trouble. > > > > If this is beyond your knowledge, you can use such situations as > > occasion to learn doing it. If you don't want to do it, take the > > situation as granted: The package is not available. > > All I can say is that you seem to have an attitude which precludes > rational discussion. What someone puts on his own machine, > why, and how it gets there is his own choice to make. Yes, it's your freedom to give your 3 year old child a loaded gun and let it play with it. A "configure && make install" run as root is of a comparable quality. > >> The stuff I build normally eventually winds up on > >>machines which don't even have an OS at all, let alone RPM, > >>and frequently have less than 1K of memory. And building a > >>cross-assembler or a cross-compiler which I want to run under > >>MSDOS, Linux, and Windows is not suitable for putting into an > >>RPM. I don't want to have to port RPM to MSDOS and maintain it > >>myself, thank you. > > > > We are talking about Fedora here. The tool to package and install > > packages on Fedora is rpm. > > There is not a "the tool to package and install on Fedora". There > is a preferred tool. Your opinion. If he wants to avoid trouble, he's better off not listening to you. > > Other target OSes and distributions have other tools and use other kinds > > of packages. These are completely off-topic, here. > > The topic here (drift aside) is how this fellow can accomplish > a certain goal on his machine, not how you can tell him how > to administer his machine. is the answer. > "Get the originator to build an RPM for you, > or learn how to do it yourself, or just do without." is not. Your opinion. If he wants to avoid trouble, he's better off not listening to you. > >>What a parochial attitude. Use my tools or eat **** and die. > > > > You apparently haven't understood anything. > > I understand that you want to control what other people do with > their own machines. No, .. I want to help him to avoid damage from himself. He wants to para-glide and you are telling him to jump off the hill with a couple sewed bed sheets. This could occasionally work on an average dune, but will kill you for sure elsewhere. > If you want a package to a package for an OS, you have to take the OS's > > native package administration tools into account. The safest way is to > > utilize the system's native packaging - In case of Fedora this is rpm. > > That is generally true, though not universlly. One can get into trouble > if a ./configure + make install is done badly. If you don't build as root, it can't. > The same thing is true for a badly made RPM. Yes, but the likelihood of breaking your system during building an rpm is magnitudes away from that of a naive "configure && make install". > It can clobber anything on the machine just > like ./configure. I have personally experienced that. Don't build as root. > When I have used > ./configure for install packages, I always put in there a prefix which > installs either in my own home directory, or into /usr/local. And I > haven't gotten into any trouble, because I know where I put things. One classical urban legend: Installing to /usr/local "logically" overrides their counterparts in /usr should a file exist in both places. If you locally install a vital system component to /usr/local, your system is very likely to become soon broken and unusable. => Installation to /usr/local is not harmless. > With RPM, one *doesn't* have control over where things go. You have. If building an rpm as non-root, you can't override system files during the built. When installing an rpm package, the rpm-installer will raise errors and in general will refuse to install such a package. > One has > slightly more control over being able to uninstall. But if a bad RPM > overwrites a file, it is gone. Normally, an rpm does not overwrite any file. > > If you don't, you're off-limits and on your own, independent of the OS. > > Eh? I'll take that to mean that if he doesn't follow your guidelines, > then you are unwilling to help him out if he gets into trouble. Nonsense. Of cause there are many ways to achieve a goal, but then you've got to know what you're doing. Most people aren't and therefore almost certainly _will_ fall into pitfalls, they are not aware about. All I do is to tell you: If you want to avoid trouble, you're better off packaging packages as rpms on rpm based systems. Ralf -- Registered Linux User # 26 http://counter.li.org
