[CentOS] Upgrading from CentOS 5.6 to 6.0

[Les Mikesell]

On 7/25/2011 11:37 AM, Patrick Lists wrote:
>
>>>> Installing non RPM software on an RPM Distro like CentOS is frowned
>>>> upon. That is the worst way to do it.
>>> ----
>>> why?
>>>
>>> you made a vacuous argument.
>>>
>> @Craig:   I retract that.  Probably something that is discouraged,
>> rather than frowned upon   Lanny
>
> In the RHEL environments where I have worked, installing non RPM
> software was more than frowned upon. It was strictly forbidden and cause
> for immediate public flogging. If someone could not (or did not want to)
> understand why installing non RPM software was a bad idea then that
> person would have been removed from his duties.

In production environments where you treat hardware as disposable 
commodity chunks it makes sense to demand the extra effort to make the 
software components reproducible across repeated installs.  In other 
scenarios, it is just extra effort without much purpose unless someone 
else has already done it.  That is, building an RPM is always more work 
than doing a source install and often imposes inconvenient restraints 
like only permitting a single version to be running at once, and doesn't 
give you any guarantee that you won't have to repeat that extra work 
when the distribution changes.  If you aren't planning to repeat that 
install on other machines, where's the payback for the extra work and 
constraints?

-- 
    Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com