On Friday, October 26, 2012 1:50:53 PM UTC-5, Dave Mankoff wrote: > > [...] I wanted to avoid package management systems only because they are > way more complicated than a basic install of python requires: > > wget python.tgz > tar -xzvf python.tgz > cd python > ./configure --prefix=/install/path > make > make test > make install > > I wanted to make (I have made?) a simple "python" class that accepts a > python version number, downloads it, and runs those steps, irrespective of > the base Linux flavor. I don't know much of anything about deb or rpm files > other than that they are more complicated than that; and I don't want to > have to package up and maintain several different python versions for > several different package managers. >
And I am startled that you actually *want* to install anything on your systems without using your package manager. Aside from making it pretty darn easy to install software, your package manager makes it easy to - know what software is installed, including for automated tools such as Puppet, - ensure that your software's dependencies are installed, and *remain*installed, - have your software automatically installed as a dependency of other software, - know what files belong to each package, and identify files that don't belong to any package, - ensure that every install of your software is the same (to the extent that the same package is used everywhere) - prevent conflicts between packages, - cleanly remove everything that belongs to a package (init scripts? man pages? documentation? config files? you can't in general rely on everything to be in the same place) - optionally, to automate additional management tasks that should attend installation / upgrade / removal of the software - avoid having development tools installed on most systems I've probably missed a couple. Software packaging is a *major* win, very much offsetting the cost of building your own packages where you need to do so. There is a bit of a learning curve for building your own packages, multiplied by the number of packaging systems you actually need to deal with, but it's really not that hard. If you're just packaging a different version of something for which your distro already provides packages, then as Tim said, you can probably get away with just making a few changes to the existing packaging instructions. John -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/puppet-users/-/xwVMIK40LJYJ. To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en.
