On Thu, 13 Oct 2005, Daniel Hobe wrote:

> This may be getting slightly off topic, but anyway...
>
> On 10/12/05, snacktime <snacktime / gmail.com> wrote:
> <snip>
>>
>> I try to stay away from rpm's if I can, but I imagine that you can probably
>> find a 1.8 rpm and then given the right command line arguments make it
>> install in /usr/local. Then just repeat that on the servers where you need
>> 1.8.
>
> I've never understood why people stay away from packages (be they
> RPMs, debs or whatever).   Packages, properly put together, ensure
> that all your machines are running the same binaries, which are built
> in a reproducible manner.  I'd be concerned about running into
> problems where your ruby installs have differing modules (say missing
> openssl) because the development files were missing when you built
> ruby.
>
> Most of my installs need to be deployed to hundreds or more machines.
> I couldn't imagine doing this without making a package for the
> software.

i go back an forth.  here's a motivator for you though:  i recently switched a
webserver from an old redhat to a new debian.  i had compiled __evertything__
using

   export LD_RUN_PATH=/opt
   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt
   ./configure --prefix=/opt && make && sudo make install

the only thing i used the system for was c libraries, grep, ls - etc.  this is
how i migrated to a new server

   scp -r /opt newserver:/

took about 5 minutes and i had tons of seriously dynamic web aps - gallery,
python wikis, ruby wikis, etc etc.  it would have been SOOOO painful to
migrate with rpms it wouldn't have been possible i think.

i hate polluting system space.  that said, i use up2date/yum on my fedora
boxes and i'ts fine.

>
>>
>>
>> I'm not sure if /usr/local is the correct location on redhat though, you
>> will probably want to check that.
>
> It is.
>
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Hobe <hobe / gmail.com>
> After the darkness of her speech; I go bewildered in a mist of prophecies.
>
>

-a
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