Gary V wrote: > As far as SpamAssassin goes, I don't believe there is a significant > difference in what a .deb package provides and what installing from source > provides (which is essentially what CPAN does, bringing dependencies with > it). I think you would find the program files and rules would be the same > for a given version. The CPAN modules may be available a week or two before > a .deb package is, but that is the only real difference. The .deb package > may also install more dependencies that CPAN would. The .deb package also > installs an initscript, so there are advantages. Mixing both methods is > often a bad thing however.
The difference that I see is that I can undo the deb method. I can install and uninstall and move forward and backward through versions. I can inventory what is installed and duplicate it on another system easily. It is a very safe and comforting place to work. Conversely with the CPAN method, once invoked, the system is forever on the CPAN method. There is no going back or at least not without difficulty. Because the files are not tracked with the package manager it is very difficult to return to the previous system state. Because CPAN tracks the latest bits of everything it is hard to reliably install from one day to the next and to know that I am going to get the same result on different systems. Of course that is fine for a significant portion of the population. Bob
