Re: Different versions of same app (Peter McCool)

Peter McCool wrote:

> Say I want to run Postgres 6.5 and 7: 6.5 for production apps and 7 for
> testing.

Not really a problem.

> Most distros of my acquaintance (RedHat, Debian, Slackware, Mandrake)
> make this a total nightmare by putting binaries for most everything in
> /usr/bin.

Most "standard applications" are placed there (and a bunch of other 
places). With RPM based distributions this is easy to adjust according 
to taste/requirements.

> The old-skool approach of /usr/local/app lets you do this in a semi-sane
> way. C'mon, my RH9 box has 1700 files in /usr/bin. Madness!
> 
> Most of the commercial Unices of my acquaintance have addressed this in
> some way. I'm curious why Linux hasn't...

RPM, and all other package systems I have used, has a provision for 
this. I will stick with RPM because it is the one I am most familiar 
with. Most configure scripts if you run ./configure --help will tell you 
how to re-direct the default install location (usually /usr/local/).

With RPM all you need to do is:

rpm -ivh --prefix /usr/local <packagename>

This will work IF the package is "relocatable". If the package is NOT 
relocatable then you can install it in a chroot jail with:

rpm -ivh --root <path> <packagename>

All of this info can be found at http://www.rpm.org or man rpm or 
/usr/share/doc/rpm-4.2/relocatable (on my RH9 system).

RPM, though much maligned, is a very handy tool for package management. 
If you use an RPM based system you would do well to learn some of its 
handier features.

-DU-...etc...