Compile-time options
There is some packages which behave differently depending on compile
time options. When one installs such programs from source, it is no
problem, becouse he may chose options which suit his system.
But when using package management system, it becomes a problem, becouse
binary packages come with one (most common configuration). Here are two
examples:
1. ssh.
Ssh can be complied with SOCKS support. Most people don't need it but I
recently encounter situation, when I can access outside world only via
Windows proxy server. runsocks script doesn't help, becouse ssh is suid
binary and LD_PRELOAD doesn't work on it. So, I have to rebuild ssh
changing just one option in ./configure line. (which cause one more
package in Depends: line, so I cannot recomend it as general solution)
2. Network Audio (nas)
Most sound-enabled programs in Debian distribution are NAS-aware. But,
typically, it requires recompiling with -laudio and some changes in
configuration/Imakefile. Only package in slink which can be switched to
use NAS during runtime configuration, is festival. All other packages
can be compilied either with direct use of Linux sound driver (which I
think is evil, becouse it defeats network transparency) or with NAS,
which
makes them completely silent when they runs on display which doesn't
have corresponding audio server.
Opposite is also true. If machine runs audio server, no program could
write to /dev/dsp directly. I think that is a same as you cannot run
SVGAlib program in xterm window.
I have rebuild some packages from slink
with NAS support and put it on my homepage see
http://www.ice.ru/~vitus/nas/debian.html (note: I forget to bring
diff.gz today)
I suppose, that only way to go is to provide several binary packages for
each such program. (I haven't yet figured out how to build both NAS-aware
and not NAS-aware version from same source package, although it is quite
evident, that orig.tar.gz would be same).
--------------------------------------------------
Victor Wagner vitus@ice.ru
Programmer Office:7-(095)-132-0878
Institute for Commerce Home: 7-(095)-135-46-61
Engineering http://www.ice.ru/~vitus
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