Re: make command understanding

[Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu>]

Muhammad Yousuf Khan <sirtcp@gmail.com> writes:

> Thanks all , thanks for the detailed answer but do you think compiling
> is a good solution to go-with, except installing the package from
> repository. i have heard that  people always suggest to install
> packages from repository not by compiling. i know repo should contain
> old release but stable one however, for more option and newer releases
> one should need to compile it from source.
>
> but my question is, what pros do normally ?

Unless you've got a good reason (it isn't in the repository, or you need
something more recent than has made it to the repository, or you want to
make some modifications to it are the three that come to mind
immediately), install from the repository.  There are three major
advantages to this:

(1) the developer may be working with a directory structure that's
    different from the Debian structure.  The package maintainer will
    have patched the package to match the Debian structure.

(2) the version from the repository will (probably -- exceptions
    constitute bugs) have been compiled and tested against versions of
    libraries and other programs that you've got on your system.

(3) if you can't install, the package manager will know what other
    packages you need in order to fix the situation.

If you compile from source, (1) says you can get stuff installed
someplace weird, (2) says you may trigger bugs that wouldn't have turned
up in the version in the repository, and (3) says if compilation fails
you're completely on your own to guess what additional software you need
to install -- and that may not be in the repository either.