Re: source-based package management

[Luis Araujo]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    >    Has anyone considered also offerin a source-based solution,
>    >    like the popular Ports system in BSD distributions, or in
>    >    Gentoo GNU/Linux's emerge program?
>    > 
>    > Is there anything wrong with `./configure && make install'?
>
>    No automatic dependency management? Also, not all software is built
>    like this.
>
> Sure, but not all software is packaged either.  Anything that is
> useful should be packaged.  
Most of the useful stuff is already packaged.
> But I really fail to see the point of
> `source based installers'.  What purpose does it serve?  Who will use
> it?
>
>   
It is up to the installer what you could do with the sources. For
example, the installer could give you
easy ways (automated) to tweak specific options of most of the packages
with their respectives
dependencies.
> If one just needs a automatic way to compile a couple hundred
> packages, then GSC does that job, and is easily tweakable.
>
> But for all other purposes, I really cannot see what is so bad with
> `./configure && make install'.  If you are a developer, you will want
> alot of control over what happens, and a `source based installer' will
> not help you there.
>   
Pretty much the same with other kind of installer too.