What Fedora makes sucking for me - or why I am NOT Fedora

[Les Mikesell]

Kevin Kofler wrote:
> 
>> Anyone who _wants_ todays bugs from upstream can always grab their
>> tarball and build it under /usr/local/ with the big advantage of having
>> a way back when they find it doesn't quite work.
> 
> Uh, what way back?

Just use the one you still have in /usr/bin.

> A non-RPM package is almost impossible to uninstall
> cleanly, at least as soon as you have more than one package in /usr/local.

That's true for some.  Many understand that you often want parallel 
installs and go where you tell them.

> Moreover, they may also write stuff to /usr, for example for menu entries
> or other system integration tasks. (Or if they don't do that, they often
> lack the system integration they'd have when installed to /usr.)

System integration is generally a mistaken concept when you want 
parallel installs.

> Programs
> are not isolated pieces.

Many are, until distributions break the concept of parallel installs.

> Tracking what they install where is what packages
> are for.

With big tradeoffs in terms of making concurrent versions mostly impossible.

> Some programs support "make uninstall", but most either don't
> support it at all or never test it and leave it in various stages of
> brokenness. And in any case it only works if you still have the exact
> configured build directory you used to install the package.

And some install under a self-contained directory

> It's much easier to rpm -Uvh --oldpackage to an older version than to get
> rid of some custom-installed version.

Maybe.  What if the new version had dependencies that pulled in 
non-backwards compatible components?

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com