In regards to prebuilt binaries

[Jonathan Hutchins]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Justin [mailto:justin at palmerville.com]

> Here's something I'm ignorant of (any probably easily found in 
> documentation), how does rpm handle traditional ./configure options? 
>  For example:  let's say I'm installing php on my apache system which 
> also runs mysql and gd.  With configure/make/make install I'd pass it 
> --with-mysql --with-apache=../foo/bar/httpd 
> --with-gd=/what/ever/gd, etc...
> 
> How are those handled with rpm, does it just know?  Do the 
> others have to be installed via rpm for it to work.  

Part of this is done through dependencies - if something has to be installed
for an RPM to work, it will notify you when you try to install it.  An
obvious derivative to this is that it would offer to go get it for you if it
didn't find it, but unfortunately that's never been (successfully)
implemented (partly due to the unreliability of mirror sources).

Differing file locations can be a problem, since if you only use RPM's you
don't have to know where everything is or is supposed to be, and RedHat is
notorious for setting it's own standards in these matters (the LSB is
working to better this but it's not there yet).  This is mostly handled by
1) Staying within your distribution - you won't be happy if you install a
bunch of Mandrake RPM's on a RedHat system, and vice versa; and 2) Sticking
with RPM's as opposed to installing stuff wherever YOU feel like putting it.

This is sort of like linuxconf - you could configure things with it, but if
you did some configuration with linuxconf and some by editing your own text
files, you were likely to end up not being able to find where the
configuration was actually broken.

The biggest PITA of RPMs is the power it takes to work with the database.
Take a marginally old box, and ask it to do something where it has to really
work with a large number of RPMs (initial install, a major upgrade, or just
rpmfind), and it will grind to a halt for half an hour.