[wplug] Managing updates

Jonathan S. Billings wbanguna at gmail.com
Wed May 7 21:14:57 EDT 2008


On Wed, May 07, 2008 at 12:13:35PM -0400, Weber, Lawrence A wrote:
>
> One of my biggest problems with maintaining my Linux systems is
> associated with updating an application.  I heavily rely on the
> built in update manager for most updates but they seem to stop
> finding updates when a system get to be a couple of versions old.  
> 
> I find I have to manually update many of the very low level
> applications; yesterday it was gcc.  After resolving some version
> dependencies with other components, I  successfully compiled the new
> version and installed it in the default location, /usr/local.   
> 
> I did this so I could test the new version without destroying my
> older version.  Now that it works, how do I go about moving it to
> /bin?  There are numerous components and I am concerned that a
> manual move will miss something.  Is my only option to rebuild it
> with --prefix set to /bin?  I could leave it in /usr/local but then
> how do I remove ALL of the old version? 

I build my own packages for software that is either too old in the
current distro or isn't packaged there.  Learn to build packages for
whatever distro you use, it is helpful.

That said, I think you might want to reconsider replacing the default
gcc your version of the linux distro provides.  There is an incestuous
relationship between gcc, glibc and the linux kernel, and not having
them in sync can lead to the inability to build new software or kernel
modules.  You can do what Redhat/Fedora did, and call alternate
versions of gcc their name with the version appended, like 'gcc34', or
put it in an alternative location.  When you want to build software
with the alternative gcc, just use CC=/usr/bin/gcc34 or
CC=/opt/gcc3.4/bin/gcc in the Makefile or configure run.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <wbanguna at gmail.com>


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