On 9/17/2010 3:08 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: > >> Agreed that it's good to know how - but 'there isn't any rpm' should >> really mean there isn't any rpm at any well-maintained location, not >> just in the base system or that you didn't bother to look. Every time >> you build something yourself you are taking on the job of maintaining it >> forever and probably leaving people in a lurch when you leave and >> someone else has to figure out what non-standard things you did. > > Um, no. Sometimes users want stuff that no one *has* built a package for, > and I'm certainly not going to. Perhaps you work in a more structured > environment, where all the servers are the same. Ain't the case in a lot > of places I've worked, and certainly not here (here being where I work > now, and who I ->may not<- imply that I speak for, contract regs, federal > regs...). > > And, of course, you'd *better* document what you did and how you did it, > and put that in a well-known location, such as the organization's wiki.... All I'm saying is that it often turns out to be a whole lot more work than the initial 'configure, make, make install', so you either have to train the users to do their own copies in their own space so it will scale, or be very careful about how much of this you take on. And I'm saying this from experience. It's not much different from writing your own code where the initial cut is about 10% of the work of maintaining it - and if the upstream project goes away or takes a direction not compatible with your use, that's where you end up anyway. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com