[H-GEN] What have I installed?

[Jason Parker-Burlingham]

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"Steven Shaw" <steven_shaw at iprimus.com.au> writes:

> It won't help this time but I find that never installing .tar.gz files to
> the default location works for me. Something like:
> 
>     $ tar tvfz foo-0.1.tar.gz
>     $ cd foo-0.1
>     $ ./configure --prefix ~/local/foo-0.1
>     $ make
>     $ make check
>     $ make install

This works well if foo-0.1 fully respects the $PREFIX convention.
Some errant software will "forget" to do that and try to put things
into /usr/local even though you asked for /usr/local/foo-0.1.  Which
of course works out just fine for most people, who don't change the
defaults.

> You have to set up your PATH, MANPATH and maybe LD_LIBRARY_PATH or whatever
> but at least you know where the stuff is. Then you can remove by rm -f
> ~/local/foo-0.1. Package systems are overrated ;-) [1]

Well, the nice thing about package systems is you benefit from someone
else doing all this farting around for you, *and* there's usually a
manifest of files installed by the package, making for much easier
removal.

But y'all knew that.
-- 
``I may have agreed to something involving a goat.''  -- CJ

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