Was: [CentOS] OT: Apache Built -how do add SSL module?, Now: OT 'Use RPMS' /rant.

[Peter Serwe]

Yeah, I'm such a RH/FC/CentOS noob, I'm not used to the whole 'Use RPMS' 
thing. 

I'm about 12* more comfortable compiling from source and satisfying 
dependencies,
that dealing with packaging practically seems like a waste of time.

On the other hand, we have about 90 custom RPM's for our application,
that until recently have been mostly based around RH9, and it's related
underlying support structure.  Rebuilding it to run under CentOS was
*only* a week, including porting yum 2.6.1 to run under our slightly
hacked version of python24.

A good portion of that was due to the fact that we had source RPM's
and spec files.  I still prefer the *BSD ports tree, but I can deal with
RPM's a bit now.

BTW, KB's repository rocks.  We're probably going to end up trying
to port httpd-2.2, if the result is worth sharing, we're willing.

Peter

Will McDonald wrote:
> OK, cool. The reason for the potted "Use RPMS" response was that the
> vast majority of people asking "how to do X/Y/Z" with the source tend
> not to understand what they're doing or why, they're just following a
> how-to or FAQ that doesn't take a packaging system into consideration.
> And people who do "get it" tend to just RTFM or Google it :)

-- 
Peter Serwe <peter at infostreet dot com>
http://www.infostreet.com

"The only true sports are bullfighting, mountain climbing and auto racing." -Earnest Hemingway

"Because everything else requires only one ball." -Unknown