[PLUG] Re: "Gender" issues

[Will Andrews]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 04:19:53PM -0500, James B Newby (newbyjb@siu.edu) wrote:
> want something that was released that day, you could possibly get it 
> with an apt get to unstable, but the package may not be ready for happy 
> inclusion in a Debian system.  With tarballs, you don't need to worry 
> about waiting for the particular maintainer to come out with a package. 
>   You can get it that minute from the developer.

You also lose system coherence, which you could avoid by
upgrading the package yourself.  Typically (I am not as familiar
with Debian's packaging as I am with FreeBSD's), you only need to
update the tarball in the deb and maybe adjust a few patches.
That's pretty much it...  when you have been working with
packages as long as I have, you start to realize that they are
really just wrappers for the tarballs.. that they offer many
advantages over just grabbing the tarball, and that updating the
wrapper is usually much easier as far as system management and
ocassionally using software goes.

> 	I realize that debian's package management makes mass upgrading more 
> trivial, but for my home machine, I like more direct control.  I like to 
> compile the source myself.

That's what most people say, but they never understood what a
package is and does.  To most people, it doesn't appear to offer
any real control, but packagers really do offer you more than
just the option of getting somebody else's precompiled
packages... they also offer you the ability to use the wrappers
for anything you specify, including updated versions of some
package... in which case you'd have to "compile the source
yourself", but with a wrapper.  There's really not that much of a
distinction if you look at the details.  That's what open source
(I should say "free software" for Debian ;) is all about.  :-)

It's just a couple more commands to figure out if you use a
packaging wrapper... and lots of time saved.  That is unless you
like chaos and prefer to install everything under
package-specific prefixes, of course.  :-)

Ciao,
-- 
wca