On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Whit Blauvelt whit@transpect.com wrote:
But seriously, aside from the nice theory about how each package management system cures all dependency problems (which isn't 100% true), how many people have actually found themselves in trouble from, say, building their own LAMP stack on whatever distro, and skipping the package management system bottleneck entirely? Maybe I've just had rare good luck with it, but for me it's worked without problems, ever. That said, it's become less necesary in recent years, as the distro packages have gotten better. Yet I don't run a single system without a few programs built from source. Despite the theory, it has _never_ been a problem.
It actually counts for probably 20-30% of all the support necessary on the irc channels with people trying to update php/mysql or similar from source. Additionally, if you maintain multiple systems, it's far easier to build it once within package management, and push out the updates rather than building on each individual machine. Additionally, when it comes to software audits, it's nice to be able to say "that file came from this package, and has (not) been modified since install using this verification method". Additionally, we get a large number of questions about removing packages, or getting them back to a default state. There are loads of packages that don't include 'make uninstall' functionality, so your average user may be screwed if they don't have a complete grasp of building
Basically it comes down to this. You're free to manage your systems as you see fit. Source builds may well work just fine for you because you seem to be aware of the intricacies involved. However recommending that someone else do this isn't always the safe/smart play. If they don't have the same grasp you do, and they blow up their system because they didn't understand it... YOU, and to a lesser degree the mailing list/distro are going to get the blame because you told them it was the best way to go.
It may be ivory tower thinking, but to me it doesn't matter if it's debian, ubuntu, centos, fedora, or whatever else. You use the tools and package managers specific to your distro. to help keep things sane for others.