Package Management: Use It
@ 2009-02-02 20:41:00
Filed under: Linux Tech
I like package management. It makes deploying software so much simpler and reproducible. I don't get why so many people do not use package management. I understand why a home user may not see the benefit when installing a few applications on their systems ... but if a system administrator doesn't use package management I have to wonder. A company that is running a server for a group I'm helping out installed git for us on the server. The server is CentOS ... but they didn't use an RPM ... they downloaded a source tarball, ./configure; make; make install missing some dependencies and then said it was ready. Really? This isn't a desktop!
The only things I dislike more than not using a package manager are 1. using multiple methods of software tracking. (Mac OS X is a great example of doing it wrong: some things are installers, other things are packages, other things are appdirs. You could also add ports in there too. Yech!) 2. Package managers without any standard information (think Java's jars. Yeah, now stop so you don't die).
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Filed under: Linux Tech
I like package management. It makes deploying software so much simpler and reproducible. I don't get why so many people do not use package management. I understand why a home user may not see the benefit when installing a few applications on their systems ... but if a system administrator doesn't use package management I have to wonder. A company that is running a server for a group I'm helping out installed git for us on the server. The server is CentOS ... but they didn't use an RPM ... they downloaded a source tarball, ./configure; make; make install missing some dependencies and then said it was ready. Really? This isn't a desktop!
The only things I dislike more than not using a package manager are 1. using multiple methods of software tracking. (Mac OS X is a great example of doing it wrong: some things are installers, other things are packages, other things are appdirs. You could also add ports in there too. Yech!) 2. Package managers without any standard information (think Java's jars. Yeah, now stop so you don't die).
digg it
seed it
del.icio.us
ma.gnolia
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