Nate Bargmann wrote:
> Hi Miles, et. al.
>
> As an upstream developer/maintainer and downstream user of packages both
> locally built and packaged, I've come to the conclusion that, at least
> in the case of Debian, building from source is for "those who know what
> they are doing." On the one hand, given the wide array of prebuilt
> packages available, why should anyone build from source? On the other,
> if one is on Stable there may well be a package that becomes unusable
> for reasons beyond Debian (occurred with an amateur radio package during
> Squeeze as I recall), yet it will not be addressed by the project (an
> updated backport was never provided for Squeeze as I recall).
>
> At least due to the FHS Debian has never taken steps to violate the idea
> that /usr/local is reserved for the local administrator. As a user of
> GNU Autotools in the projects I am involved in this is a good thing as
> this is the Autotools default destination directory.
>
> As I see it, project maintainers/developers should take care to properly
> document the specific installation instructions including build options
> in the INSTALL file included as part of an Autotools source archive
> tarball. As an upstream all I ask is that the distribution stay out of
> my way for local builds so they can be installed to expected locations
> in the file system or in user specified locations. I also expect
> distributions to provide reasonably up to date tools in their latest
> releases so the user can build the project successfully.
>
> That said, it is quite another thing for someone to want to take a
> source package and make a local binary package (.deb in our case) to be
> installed using the package management system. That is well beyond my
> scope and interest as an upstream developer and I would expect the
> distribution to provide timely and clear documentation and the tools for
> doing so.
>
> In short, as an upstream it's my job to make sure that 'configure; make;
> make install' "just work" and is documented and it's the distribution's
> job to make sure its packaging system is documented. Did I explain it
> well enough to see where the line of responsibility between upstream and
> distribution lies and their responsibility to the user?

One problem with locally built software is managing
dependencies. Another is being able to uninstall.

I found that using the program 'checkinstall' instead of
'make install' will create and install a debian package, that you can
later remove using dpkg.

Cheers,

Joel

> - Nate
>
> --
>
> "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
> possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true."
>
> Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us
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--
Joel Roth