If you like this idea then by all means go look into FreeBSD (the others
BSDs may do it that way as well...don't know).
There a couple of problems i have with this:
1) Time... rpm -i XFree86-4.0.1.rpm need I say more.
2) Not everybody has all the devel rpms installed. Now you need lots of
other packages (that you have to compile).
3) RPM isn't very well suited to #2. the debian system does do much better
(IMHO).
4) It's not very user friendly...now, this is Linux so there's nothing
stopping you from doing it this way. You have all the SRPM files....
--rdp
On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Paul Lussier wrote:
> In a message dated: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 14:53:58 EDT
> Benjamin Scott said:
>
> > In the defense of the packagers, don't forget, a lot of the settings for
> >where stuff is get built into the program at compile-time, so the package
> >manager really can't do much to help you out there. In that case, I always
> >reach for the source. One more reason why Open Source is a Good Thing.
>
> With the exception of apps distributed in a binary-only fashion, what's so hard
> of just using a "smart" source rpm.
>
> Picture this, the RPM (or deb) consists of the source tree only. When you use
> 'rpm -i* name.rpm' or 'rpm -U* name.rpm' it does:
>
> ./configure
> make
> make install
>
> and installs everything into the default/proper locations.
>
> When you use the --prefix=/some/long/path option or --relocate... it does:
>
> ./configure --prefix=/some/long/path
> make
> make install
>
> and installs everything into the location you *wanted* it installed in.
>
> This exact mechanism would only work if the app used autoconf/automake, but
> that is a significant amount of the open source packages out there. So, for
> the majority of stuff, this would work.
>
> This gives you the benefits of RPM, and the benefits of compiling from source.
>
>
--
Rich Payne
[EMAIL PROTECTED] www.alphalinux.org
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