[ale] linus doesn't like Debian?

[Michael B. Trausch]

Paul Cartwright, on 08/23/2007 07:39 AM said:
> 
> yeah, like trying to install a package from source, so the DB doesn't know it 
> is installed.. so I use checkinstall. How does ubuntu handle that type 
> situation?
> 

The short answer:  Any way you want it to.  :)

The longer answer:  You can use checkinstall, if you want to just do
something very quickly.  If the package already exists in one of the
repositories (and chances are, it does), then building from source is
actually painless:  Download the package, use one of the Debian package
building tools, and be on your way.  If there's an upstream release that
you want to upgrade to, there is a program that will take that upstream
release and update the Debian source package for it, and then you can
build the package with the new upstream version.  There is a system
called 'prevu' for Ubuntu that makes some of this easier, though 'prevu'
has some interesting limitations.

The only disadvantage that there is to using checkinstall is that the
packages that result may or may not be named properly, may or may not be
properly versioned, etc., and so if you enter bad data, it will never
recognize that you have a package that something else relies on.
Checkinstall also does not make it easy to specify things like
dependencies, etc. when ready to build the package for the software
you're installing, so it's useful for one-off testing, I think, but not
much else.

I am working on replacing the 'prevu' script family with something more
versatile that should be usable on both Ubuntu and Debian systems that
would make installing from source pretty much painless---while still
following the guidelines that exist.  Hopefully.

	-- Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch              Internet Mail & Jabber: mike at trausch.us
Phone:  (404) 592-5746 x1                        http://www.trausch.us/
Mobile: (678) 522-7934            VoIP: 6453 at sip.trausch.us, 861384 at fwd

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