[Techtalk] Having to be root to build an app

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 07:23:19PM +1000 or thereabouts, Mary wrote:
> (Incidently, it's stunning how many INSTALL files start with "and now
> type su - and put in your root password" or "now reinstall PHP" or
> "create a database with name BLAH" these days.)

I. Hate. This.

I tend not to do"./configure; make; make install". Instead, I
do "./configure; make" and then run the app and see whether it
is something I am going to want around for other people to use
or for me to use on other accounts. 

And the number of programs you have to install globally before
you can even try them out annoys me. Often, the author doesn't
even realise because they have never tried it. Some have
simply dumped core. Others just can't find files and spew
error messages everywhere. 

Similarly, I thought the "relocatable" feature of rpms sounded
wonderful. "Ooh, so I can say 'install into ~/bin' then?" Well,
I still don't know for sure because I have never yet met an
rpm which does not say "Relocations: (not relocateable)" in
rpm -qi. Grr.

Even better are the occasional packages which have no
mechanism for removing themselves nicely. Just what I like
to see when I realise an app is not what I needed. 

Telsa