From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jun 19 08:58:38 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C00816A4CE for ; Sat, 19 Jun 2004 08:58:38 +0000 (GMT) Received: from drlost.vo.lu (drlost.vo.lu [80.90.45.45]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CB9CB43D31 for ; Sat, 19 Jun 2004 08:58:37 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from pu@vo.lu) Received: from [192.168.1.4] (unverified [80.90.32.138]) by drlost.vo.lu (Visual Online SMTP gateway) with ESMTP id 30830821 for multiple; Sat, 19 Jun 2004 10:58:15 +0200 Message-ID: <40D40027.1040009@vo.lu> Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 10:58:15 +0200 From: Patrick Useldinger User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040514 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Giorgos Keramidas References: <40D336A0.5020803@vo.lu> <20040618203516.GA75213@gothmog.gr> In-Reply-To: <20040618203516.GA75213@gothmog.gr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authenticated-User: pu@vo.lu Domain drlost.vo.lu cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: any use to build from source? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 08:58:38 -0000 Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > Before I answer to this question, I cannot help noting that you don't > *HAVE* to compile everything from source. In fact, if you install a > RELEASE version of FreeBSD and use pkg_add to install the binary, > precompiled packages of just the applications you are going to > use... there is absolutely no need to rebuild anything from source. True for the CDs. But once you want to upgrade, things get more complicated. For example, I did not find a package for OpenOffice 1.1.1 in the "offical" places, although OO is certainly an excellent candidate for a package. This led me to the conclusion that packages, in the FBSD world, are considered less important than the very well maintained ports. I would prefer it to be the other way round: go for packages, unless you want to tweak anything. > Now, some of us -- actually, I feel that this is a large percentage of > the FreeBSD users, if the amount of questions posted here on this list > is of any significance at all -- a great percentage of us likes trimming > our installations; we like building our packages with the exact options > and feature sets that *we* prefer. In such cases, having the ability to > build from source is absolutely marvelous. I agree with that argument, you can tailor the compilation. But it's probably not systematical, but rather the exception. I do not agree with an earlier argument, which was that you could change the source. I have been programming for 25 years now, I am certain that you don't change code, not even in a reasonably sized project, without spending a large amount of time. -pu