On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 09:49:21AM -0400, Jim Perrin wrote:
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.
A large part of that problem is that people are asking for support in the wrong place, right?
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.
I get it, it's a "Do as I say, not necessarily as I do" situation because those committed to providing support through the mailing list (which CentOS is exemplary on) don't want to have to support stuff that's outside the scope of CentOS. That scope boundary gets fuzzy if there are too many references to going beyond the RPM system in list comments. Perhaps each such reference needs a footnote: "You might do this, but go somewhere else for support of it."
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.
Sanity here is relative. If you go to the main support channels for stuff like Apache or PHP or Python or Postfix or whatever, and you're having trouble because of some bug that they fixed literally years ago, but which your distro of choice doesn't yet provide packaged, you'll find no patience for the "I'm not going to compile your current version because then my distro would be impure" excuse for not upgrading to fix the problem.
So from their POV it's insane that you're staying with what they see as an obsolete, unsupported version. Yet from a distro-centric POV it's insane that you're not. I get both POV's. I think the take home is: If you need to go beyond what your distro provides, you need to take your support questions beyond your distro's channels too.
Best, Whit