On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Joel Reymont wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I noticed a lot of packages available via apt-get on Linux. Richard
> Jones seems to recommend grabbing packages using apt-get as well. I
> also understand that GODI is a convenient way of keeping packages up-
> to-date.
>
>; What approach should I prefer?
>
> Thanks, Joel
That depends.
If you're on a system that has a good apt-get interface, it works quite
nicely. If you're on something like OS X that doesn't support it [1] then
the debian packages are kind of worthless.
As for GODI, well it is getting better, but as with anything there are
issues. Packages aren't updated as often as they should be (this reminds
me, I've got an update for cryptokit 1.3 to send to Gerd) -- for example,
the openssl package in GODI is still at version 0.2 while the library is
at 0.4 (I'm having some issues building 0.4 so I can't create a new
GODI package at the moment). Granted, the same thing can happen with the
apt packages, but they seem to keep up better in my limited experience.
Of course, more users for GODI means more incentive for maintainers to
keep the packages up to date...
[1] Well, it sort of supports it via fink, but everything needs to be
repackaged for fink, and nobody is packaging ocaml stuff for fink.
William D. Neumann
---
"There's just so many extra children, we could just feed the
children to these tigers. We don't need them, we're not doing
anything with them.
Tigers are noble and sleek; children are loud and messy."
-- Neko Case
Life is unfair. Kill yourself or get over it.
-- Black Box Recorder
.
