On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 8:36 AM, Kent Tenney <[email protected]> wrote:

> The basic principle of  destructive testing.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destructive_testing
>
> I learn best by taking things apart, breaking them.

Yes.   It is probably not apparent, but I have become much more
comfortable installing software recently.  And now, with installing
entire OS's :-)

>>    Packages are installed into their own isolated prefixes
>>    and then symlinked into /usr/local.
>
> I was about to say that's an ongoing debate: Windows tends towards
> app files grouped under C:\Program Files, unix prefers categorization:
> config in /etc, data in /var ...
>
> But then I noticed they are _symlinked_ symlinking does offer all kinds
> of "best of both world" type opportunities.

I have been meaning to start a separate thread merely to say that the
suggestion to create c:\apps and c:\bin (or ~/apps and ~/bin) has been
the key that has made installing apps much easier for me, on both
Windows and Ubuntu.

Indeed, it *amazing* how useful this suggestion is:

- c:\apps contains **all** the new packages I install, so I can see at
a glance what is, or is not, present.  Of course, for Python packages,
this doesn't tell me for what version of Python packages I actually
ran python setup.py install, but that's what the individual
python/Lib/site-packages are for.

- c:\bin contains .bat files (symlinks) to installed packages, as need.

    ** No need to update PATH **

This is a huge plus, and the .bat files allow me to enable/disable
packages without changing the PATH and without actually touching the
files in c:\apps.

All these benefits apply, or *should* apply, in Linux/Ubuntu, but
yesterday proves that more care is needed on Linux, imo.

True, Python is a more integral part of Ubuntu, but sip????

> Oooh, I hope you're knocking on wood ANY time you utter
> "No catastrophes"

Ok, ok, fewer catastrophes.  I'd settle right now for being able to
upgrade sip without having to reinstall Ubuntu :-)

Edward

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