[Dovecot] Can I install in the following fashion?

[Stewart Dean]

<permit me my perhaps foolish preference...an explanation>
I run mail service for a small college.  I've long joked that if someone 
stole the mail server, the phone would ring before the alarm (which has 
a 1 minute delay) did, that the user base expected 25x8x367 coverage.
Making updates/upgrades to the mail server feels like a tightrope walk 
with no net.  I always appreciated UofWIMAP because there is one binary. 
Doing and upgrade or backing it out is simplicity itself.  I could 
compile the single binary on my compile machine, test the same binary on 
my testbed, and then drop it in my production machine and it would work 
with a minimum of surprises.  So portable, so predictable, no security 
risk of a compiler on a production machine. 
Of course, /most/ of open source software has all these bits and pieces 
scattered everywhere.  Oh, it may install initially just dandy, but come 
the day when It's Time For The Upgrade....
1) can I do it quick and clean and
2) can I recover to what I had before quickly and correctly if the 
upgrade flops??????

Alas, Dovecot is sprinkled in many, many pieces...but at least, I think 
(right?) that they are all in the prefix-dir.  Gulp. So. I am hoping I 
can do this:
Build/Test Install
1) build/install in
/usr/local/dovecot_bld/ Build###
in the expectation that everything will be stuck down there.  I don't 
want to put it into /usr/local/ because it will be in there with 
everything else....no way to get just the dovecot stuff..
2) tar up the contents of my prefix directory and extract it over on my 
testbed under /usr/local/dovecot. Notice that the path to dovecot's 
"stuff" has changed from
/usr/local/dovecot_bld/ Build###
to
/usr/local/dovecot
I'm hoping that this won't be a problem.  I will point the line in inetd 
at it and Everything Will Work.
3) Assuming I don't change anything and everything tests out 
(flawlessly!), I.............

Introduction to Production
(assuming that all the mailboxes, homedirs and the like have been sorted 
out)
1) make a tarball of the current working dovecot executables dir 
(/usr/local/dovecot)
2) extract the tarball there as before on the testbed machine and 
everything is fine.
2) if the update flops, I can bring back the tarball of the previous 
Dovecot incarnation

My Questions:
A) Will this work or are there dependencies I'm not aware of?
B)  Is there Some Better Way or.....

I have this ongoing <ahem> discussion with the Open Source wonks that 
delight in many, many modules, libraries, etc.  I /know/ the reasons a 
developer would want to do things that way, but, for those of use 
fielding the application, it's /so/ much easier and success/failure 
recovery is /so/ much more likely if....there are only one or two or 
three chunks that we can drop in or quickly back out. 
I realize that the developer is coding in large part for the utter joy 
of creating a wondrous, living, breathing edifice of code, that works, 
that works cleanly, that works as none has before.  Yes. 
But I would think (IMHO) that the developer would receive a greater 
portion of the ego rush (also a big part of the developer stimulus) of 
overwhelming application acceptance (and thunderous applause), if he or 
she made it easy to support and upgrade!  You see a sysadmin is so often 
an utter coward (I confess), who doesn't like unpleasant surprises, 
whose managment Really Doesn't Like Unpleasant Surprises.  When I do my 
job really well, nobody knows I've done anything.

OK...let me have it.

-- 
====
Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources 
Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York  12504  
sdean at bard.edu  voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035