Circa 2002-Mar-22 09:58:17 +0100 dixit Tony Earnshaw:
: Circa? dixit? I wrote - didn't speak - at a specific instant in time.
[Ignored].
: Apparently Jim doesn't agree.
:
: I wasn't trying to troll. I was just stating my own opinion and asking
: that of others. And sarcasm doesn't really help.
Sometimes it does help to get the real issue out in the open. See
below.
: It appears to me, from following the threads in the Exim list, that the
: .deb and .rpm people are getting more basic problems than the
: blood-and-sweat - aka RTFM - people.
You're bicycling across the wrong bridge. Whether someone installs
software from RPMs or Debian packages (or *BSD ports) is completely
orthogonal to (a) whether they have read the manual and understand the
software, and (b) the quality of the pre-built package.
Similarly, whether someone is capable of compiling software by hand has
no bearing on whether they're literate or motivated enough to read a
reference manual. As you say below, compiling is easy for the
"ordinary" user.
: The examples that I mentioned are mostly of utilities that simply have
: to be compiled by hand, to get the desired results (they often need
: special patches and bug fixes can appear almost daily). They aren't
: fixations as far as I'm concerned. Compiling of source code has been
: made _so_ easy for the ordinary user now, that there are seldom any
: difficulties.
Sure, compiling is easy. What about deployment? Do you just copy
binaries over to another system? Yuck.
And how do you know whether a particular binary has had the latest
patches applied? Do you write it down on a piece of paper? Yuck.
Even if you don't trust anyone to compile your "important" software but
yourself, you can still benefit from RPMs or Debian packages: build
them yourself. How do you ensure that you performed all the necessary
steps to manually build your software properly? Do you make a script
to perform them? Why not apply that effort to an RPM spec file
instead? A properly written RPM spec file can build the Exim that's
just right for your environment---or for a number of different
ones---without any additional manual intervention.
Even RPM/Debian packages that you build yourself can save you time,
effort, and trouble. Especially when you want to uninstall them.
Hell, i don't even really care what sort of package format you use. Use
a shell script to build tarballs containing Encap packages
<
http://www.encap.org/> and then install them with epkg
<
http://www.encap.org/epkg/>[*]. But merely compiling and installing
software manually---especially software as important as Exim, Apache,
etc.---is a very short road to a tar pit full of entropy.
: As far as Exim's concerned, there are many compile-time options that
: suit some and not others. And as for difficultie in configuring it,
: just follow this list. If everyone knew the docs by heart, or even
: knew where to find things, then the volume on the list would be cut
: by a quarter.
Ah, now you're getting to the heart of the matter. Some folks have the
time and motivation to read manuals and/or understand how the software
works, and others don't.
That's where you can benifit from packagers you trust. For example, if
i had a FreeBSD system that needed Exim, you can bet i'd be using
Sheldon's Exim port instead of figuring out how to adapt Exim to
FreeBSD myself and doing it by hand, principally because Sheldon's
demonstrated that (a) he knows a lot about Exim, and (b) he knows
enough about FreeBSD. I could package Exim myself, but i don't know
FreeBSD well enough to be effective.
If a given person doesn't have the motivation to understand the
software, then it doesn't really matter whether they install prebuilt
packages or compile the software themselves---they'll still ask the
same questions on the mailing list.
________________
[*] Which is generally what i do on the combination of systems i have
to manage (ranging from DEC Ultrix and SCO BrokenServer through
SunOS, Slolaris, HP-SUX, IRIX, and AIX (and PAINZ) to OpenBSD and
Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Linux Penguins).
--
jim knoble | jmknoble@??? |
http://www.pobox.com/~jmknoble/
(GnuPG fingerprint: 31C4:8AAC:F24E:A70C:4000::BBF4:289F:EAA8:1381:1491)
