Re: Hesitating to take the plunge in Debian

[Josh Huber <huberj@WPI.EDU>]

Ethan Benson writes:
> >  so that I can compile anything not available for
> >PowerPC in binary form? How well does the RPM to Debian package converter
> >(alien?) work, for any RPM not available in Debian form (like MOL?)?
> 
> I have only used alien a bit, but i prefer to get a real deb or just 
> compile and install in /usr/local in those cases.  I also just 
> compile and install in /usr/local for development stage stuff like 
> MOL.  but thats just me.

I'd like to take a moment and plug stow. The stow utility rocks. (man
stow)  In case you don't know, stow is a utility for managing
source-installed 'packages'.

first:
apt-get install stow :)

Then, configure and make whatever package you're installing from
source, and install it like so:
make install prefix=/usr/local/stow/package-name

Then, cd /usr/local/stow
stow package-name

this will make symlinks to /usr/local/{bin,man,lib,sbin,etc}
automatically, giving you the ability to later simply type:
stow -D package-name
rm -r package-name

to remove the package.

In short,
it rocks :)

Josh