On 11/08/17 10:42, Joseph Tam wrote:
Or just ping me in #ghettoforge on Freenode and I'll generally get it fixed quickly, if I haven't already seen it on the list and fixed it.
Not all package maintainers are as responsive as you are. I've lost count of the number of problems reported here, where people could not move from version 1.x, because their repo did not have anything newer, or for reason out of their control, they can't update because it would/could break something else.
Oh, I know, and I'll take that as a compliment :-)
There are downsides to compiling yourself.
To be sure. (Incidentally, auto-updates are sometimes *not* what people want -- stability of a working system is paramount over anything that might jeopardize that.)
Right, but I didn't say "auto-updates", I said regular updates, which could be auto-updates but could also just be regular running of "yum update" by a human who can intervene if it blows up. It could also be a fully controlled test environment where someone does full regression testing before pushing updates out to 500 other servers in a farm.
Compiling from source is not everybody's cup of tea, but it does allow complete control over the build. Repo-packages usually are built with kitchen-sink options, which may not suit everyone.
I would encourage that if you want to go that route that you actually build your own packages and install them rather than installing directly from source. This takes advantage of the many features of package systems such as the ability to verify installs in case tampering is suspected, dependency resolution, and the ability to easily revert to a prior version if something goes wrong.
I am more than happy for anyone who wants to do this to download and use the .src.rpm files from GhettoForge as a base for their own package builds.
Peter