[CentOS] Upgrading from CentOS 5.6 to 6.0

[m.roth at 5-cent.us]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On 7/25/2011 11:37 AM, Patrick Lists wrote:
>>
>>>>> Installing non RPM software on an RPM Distro like CentOS is frowned
>>>>> upon. That is the worst way to do it.
>>>> ----
>>>> why?
<snip>
>> In the RHEL environments where I have worked, installing non RPM
>> software was more than frowned upon. It was strictly forbidden and cause
>> for immediate public flogging. If someone could not (or did not want to)
>> understand why installing non RPM software was a bad idea then that
>> person would have been removed from his duties.
>
> In production environments where you treat hardware as disposable
> commodity chunks it makes sense to demand the extra effort to make the
> software components reproducible across repeated installs.  In other
> scenarios, it is just extra effort without much purpose unless someone
> else has already done it.  That is, building an RPM is always more work
> than doing a source install and often imposes inconvenient restraints
> like only permitting a single version to be running at once, and doesn't
> give you any guarantee that you won't have to repeat that extra work
> when the distribution changes.  If you aren't planning to repeat that
> install on other machines, where's the payback for the extra work and
> constraints?

Another thing: most places I've worked, the large majority of projects
will be running in production, eventually. Having specialized packages
that you have to build, other than the project itself, means you'll
eventually have to do it for the entire time the project's in production,
and frequently means that the project itself is fragile, and perhaps
poorly implemented, and likely to break.

         mark