Re: Where to get latest versions of programs

["Mohammad Abdin" <rafat kcs org kw>]

I've tried RPMs and I've tried .tar.gz files and I prefer RPMS actually 
(in fact i download .tar.gz and build RPMs from it now). The 
problem with .tar.gz is that a 'make uninstall' is not a 'standard' 
thing. It is on the whim of the coders. Secondly, a make uninstall 
does NOT remove all of the installed files (at least not all of the 
time) so that is another problem.Also with an RPM you don't need 
the Makefile intact to do a 'make uninstall' (i.e. you can conserve 
space by deleting the rpm, but you can't for the .tar.gz)


> On Fri, Jan 15, 1999 at 12:26:05PM -0800, Scott Tyson wrote:
> > Thanks to all who replied. I don't like to compile much at all.  :).  Is
> > most gnome software released as RPMs?  
> 
> Despite what you might think, it's really not hard to ./configure; make.
> Most of the time, the tarballs work very well.  When they don't, it's
> normally because part of the latest cvs stuff hasn't been packaged yet.
> That will get you if you try building packages instead, too.  If you
> have disk space, try setting up a directory /opt/gnome (add
> /opt/gnome/libs and /opt/gnome/bin to the appropriate /etc configuration
> files (more details if you need them).
> 
> If I understand correctly (haven't tried it at home because disk space
> is minimimal), you can keep the source trees and do "make uninstall" to
> remove earlier installations.  The advantage of compiling is that you
> can try patches as soon as someone posts them, and edit files if someone
> suggests a bug fix that way (helped tremendously with the recent
> gnome-core 0.99.3, thanks, which did work against the previous
> control-panel though with some symtoms).
> 
> I generally use tkdesk to unpack the tarball, but open an xterm to do
> the actual configuring and compiling.  Tkdesk will also apply patches
> though the command line for that isn't terribly hairy.  I expect that
> gmc has or will have similiar tools; I'm just used to tkdesk.
> 
> -- 
> Rebecca Ore
> 
> 
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