I am relatively new to Linux, so please forgive me if I am asking a stupid question. I am wondering how Debian's installation system (apt) handles situations where you go back and forth from installation from a binary .deb distribution and installing from a tarball source distribution.
I have a particular situation in mind. I've got various packages installed for GNOME via apt from network sources. Now I would like to compile GNOME 1.0.40 beta, so I can help test the beta. GNOME 1.0.40 is currently only available as tar files of source code. If I compile and install from a tar distribution and overwrite the apt installation, does apt's database of installed software become invalid (i.e. apt thinks version x.y.z is installed when in reality version x.y.z+34 is installed? If I later want to install GNOME from a distribution of .deb files, am I looking for trouble? In general, is there a safe way to install version x.y from .deb followed by x.y+1 from source distribution followed by x.y+2 from .deb followed by ...? Does apt automagically do the right thing, or do I as administrator have to do the right thing? Tom
