FW: RPM vs tar and the lazy programmer

[Michael James <mjames ixl com>]

> but my point here being that the only packages provided by GNOME are
> Linux specific (debian and redhat), so the rest of the Unix world
> has no choice other than to compile from the tar'd sources.  and THAT
> in itself is a huge, messy, confusing, and rather convoluted process.

I just have to disagree with that ... I find tar installs much simpler.

configure
make 
make install

if there is a problem, it at least tells you something informative.

as far as the package vs src question, it does seem like a bad idea to
have packages install in one place and the source install go somewhere
else.  If RedHat is going to use gnome/Enlightenment, it would seem
like a good idea to build the RPMs to install things where the 
rest of the gnome/Enlightenment installs go. why make more problems than
are necessary ... there are more than enough already.

I also wanted to get opinons on my lazy programmer trick from last night.

I finally uninstalled the RPM gtk/gnome stuff last night, and starting
compiling. I left it last night compiling enlightenment, and when I
went down in the morning, I started it up with no problem. The lazy
part is running now, a perl script that un tars any tar file, cd's 
in and does 

make distclean
configure
make 
make install

with some error checking. If it hits an error, adds the current 
tar back onto the list of things to do ... I'm hoping that when I
get home tonight, I should have everything installed ... I'll
let you know if it worked.

Michael