Hi,
On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 09:49:30AM -0500, Josh Luthman wrote:
The thing I see packages being beneficial is if there are a lot of users that need an "easier" installation. If it costs more support time to make packages then to drill down the problems with compiling then I could see a reason to make packages and update them.
Distribution packages are usually not made by the authors of the software (often called "upstream", at least in Debian slang :-) but by package maintainers of the distribution.
In the Debian case, Henrik is the upstream author and Christoph Berg the package maintainer. No additional work for Henrik, except maybe more bugreports from more users and OTOH a much easier installation for a lot of users.
So unless the C code runs on all Unices, nobody has to fear a Linuxification or more work, but Linux administrators will have less work installing and especially also maintaining hobbit: no manual security updates by reinstalling necessary.
Kind regards, Axel Beckert-- Axel Beckert <beckert at phys.ethz.ch> support: +41 44 633 2668 IT Support Group, HPR E 86.1 voice: +41 44 633 4189 Departement Physik, ETH Zurich fax: +41 44 633 1239 CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/