Hello Dennis, Thank you.
On 16/09/2007, Dennis Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Graeme Nichols wrote: > > Hi Dennis, > > > > On 15/09/2007, Dennis Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> John Rudd wrote: > >>> Graeme Nichols wrote: > >>> > >>>> Anyone any ideas please? > >>> Build and install from source? > >> Works every time it's tried as the rpm creators have discovered. > > > > > > One option. But one that is guaranteed to cause future problems on an > rpm > > based system. > > > > Only if you continue to not know what you're doing. None of this is a > problem when you are the one who knows what you're doing, in fact. Well, I have a pretty good idea what I am doing but by no means would I call myself an expert. I *do* know from my own experience and from others that if one installs an application from the source code (./configure; make; make install) you have a better than even chance of having two versions of the application installed if for some reason a later version of the application is installed from a rpm package and this can cause some interesting problems. It would be *very* handy if all application tarballs had a 'make uninstall' option. Only very few bother to include such an option at the moment so it is a find as find can exercise to remove all the old bits and pieces of an application before installing a new version. Another *feature* that very few developers include in their source tarballs in a spec file. If they did then one could build an rpm binary package extremely simply using the command rpmbuild -tb [tarball name]. However, it does mean extra work and testing for the developers who are doing it in their own time. The biggest problem in this scenario is the huge number of distros all doing their own thing, putting files in their own places and not based on a core standard. It would be easy if all distros were based around a core standard and their own bells and whistles added around that core standard. *Perhaps* then a standard spec file would work on all distros but I guess this is a simplistic view by someone who uses my system as a working tool rather than a thing to experiment with. Thanks for your help as every problem is a chance to learn something. Moral of the story? If your system is based on a package manager, such as Fedora, then stick to it if at all possible. -- Kind Regards, Graeme. _______________________________________________ Help us build a comprehensive ClamAV guide: visit http://wiki.clamav.net http://lurker.clamav.net/list/clamav-users.html
