[CentOS] Compile vs. RPM

On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 11:10, Mickael Maddison wrote:

> Ok.  So basically, every response on this list feels that RPM's are
> sufficiently stable, are created fast enough to address security
> concerns that come up, and have all the 'normal' functionality that
> pretty much anyone needs... is that a fair statement?

You might have an exception or two where for some local situation
you need to have the latest available version or some special
option set during a compile but the RPMs are fine for normal
use.

> The one thing I've always liked about installing from tarball
> distributions is that I prefix everything into /usr/local -- so it's
> easy to find all the pieces.  This is perhaps the one thing that I
> find most annoying about RPM; spreading things all over the place.  Of
> course, being able to custom compile modules etc. has worked well.

But rpm keeps track of everything.  There is no equivalent of
'rpm -e packagename' to remove all parts of a tarball installed
package.  If you do need a slight customization you can download
the src rpm and tweak it.

> QUESTION:  Do most of you cron the yum updates, or do you watch for
> new RPMs and update "manually"?

I do them manually because I don't like surprises, but try not
to get too far behind.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com