On Tue, July 27, 2010 11:58, Buchan Milne wrote:
Some of the reasons to use packages are consistency with policies. For example, most distributions disallow packages from owning any files below /home, and require that operation of the software not require /usr to be writable at all times, and various other requirements. As such, logs cannot actually reside under the same parent directory as binaries. The packages provide symlinks to the real locations, so things look the same taking into account the difference in BBHOME.
If the packages don't get maintained going forward, I'd end up having to migrate to source-based, and that would involve hand-tweaking the rpm-based locations.
Well, once I have more than one installation of software, I package it myself anyway, as maintaining a package becomes less work at about the 3rd installation. If I no longer maintain packages (although I do), that *really* doesn't mean that you would need to switch, you should consider rebuilding the SRPM ...
Good advice. Thanks for elaborating. BTW, re http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/devmon/index.php?title=InstallRHELorCe..., yum reports "No package xymon.x86_64 available" when the "without yum-basearch-only" instructions are followed.