On 5 Jul 2006, at 10:16 AM, Josh Sled wrote:
On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 23:13 -0400, Rion D'Luz wrote:But, I like the idea of keeping things separate, along with their deps. Putting mysql, or apache, or blender, or whatever in its own sub-tree under opt keeps / system libs and bin from overbloating.There is a nice isolation in that approach, but it's sufficiently different from the norm as to be ... well ... different. :) Certainly outside of the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.
If you really want to isolate things (and I generally do with server installs), virtualization is also a good option to consider. VMWare server is now a free download, and Xen is also an option if you'd rather not install a proprietary solution. Admittedly, there is a resource impact, but this is a particularly appealing way to separate several low-utilization tasks from each other while not tying up multiple boxes (and the associated space, heat, and power).
I prefer to let the package manager record where files are installed, and remove old/obsolete packages. Gentoo has a probably not unique system whereby the (application-level) packages you request installed (e.g. mysql) are recorded in one list, but the libs that they pull in (e.g., readline) are not. A util can then be used to determine which packages are no longer (recursively) referenced by that file of user-referenced packages. If no longer referenced, then a package is orphaned and can safely be removed.
Debian's package-management can do the same; if you use aptitude in place of apt-get, it will do this automagically.
Kevin Broderick [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kevinbroderick.com/
