On Mon, Jun 17, 2002 at 02:16:06PM -0500, Derrick 'dman' Hudson wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2002 at 01:11:52PM -0400, Erik Mathisen wrote:
> | Hello,
> |
> | I have a question. I normally use
> |
> | apt-get install <package>
> |
> | to install any package on my system. Now I have seen how you can use
> |
> | apt-get source <package>
> |
> | and then compile it own your own machine. Now what I was wondering,
> | is there an advantage to doing this? If so, what is it, and how much
> | of an advantage is it.
>
> There might be an advantage. Here are the possibilities :
> 1) you are a speed freak and want to recompile with arch optimizations
> 2) you want to change the configure options or otherwise tweak
> the build for your purposes but still want a debian package.
> 3) you can see exactly which options and patches the DD included
> 4) you know how good debian is so you get your source and
> packages from there, even for non-debian systems :-)
>
> Unless you have some special requirements, it usually isn't necessary
> to build on your own. Here are some cases where I have found it
> necessary :
> 1) cadaver was outdated; I grabbed the debian source, copied over
> the new upstream source, and very conveniently built a new
> .deb
>
> 2) LDAP support in samba. I grabbed the source and added that
> option to the 'configure' invocation and ended up with a nice
> new .deb
or
3) there's a newer version of package foobar in unstable and you
want it. Unfortunately it depends on libabc, libdef and
libGoodKnowsWhat versions only available from unstable (not yet
in testing).
Getting the source and compiling locally will (mostly) make the
.deb depend on the version of the libs you have already
installed. So you don't need to risk it with the unstable
version of the libraries (only the unstable version of foobar).
--
Karl E. Jørgensen
karl@jorgensen.com
www.karl.jorgensen.com
==== Today's fortune:
All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists
know it.
-- Richard P. Feynman
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