[Centos-docs] Documentation Content

Fri Oct 20 18:30:42 UTC 2006
Will McDonald <wmcdonald at gmail.com>

On 20/10/06, Travis Northrup <digitalhype at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I don't want to sound like a jerk here, but what does my mentioning
>  the availability to install a Perl modules FROM a perl download source
>  have anything to do with my question.
>
>  He mentioned ssl. I told him how he could get it.
>
>  Now since its "heavily discouraged" maybe you can tell me _why_ its
>  discouraged cause I've never had a problem with it myself. Maybe I'm
>  missing something that you know and I don't.

I suspect it's discouraged because it risks breaking packaging. On an
RPM-based system it's generally considered best-practice to stick to
RPMs.

Sticking with RPMs provides a known stable, consistent, tested
environment where interactions between applications and libraries are
predictable and reproduceable.

Now, it may be that a Perl and CPAN expert knows enough to prevent
non-packaged sources from tainting package owned files but not
everyone understands what's happening when they install CPAN stuff.
Hence "heavily discouraged". That doesn't mean don't do it, it just
means be aware of consequences if you do.

My £0.02

Will.