Daniel Fischer
However, I wanted to know what the etc stood for, with taking care of dependencies and uninstalling already mentioned. Upgrading, yes, but what else?
Keeping the system consistent with other systems? If I use the system packages, I can have a higher confidence that what works for me will also work for users of the same distro. And converse, so there'll be more eyeballs per problem. Reducing the load on system admins? Although I might know the pros and cons of upgrading to GHC 6.12.y from .x, my IT department are not likely to. And they have to support a dozen different languages for several dozen users. They are also more likely to trust things they get from apt or yum repos, than tarballs off some random web site. Centrally managed bug reporting system? Not that Launchpad is awsomely responsive, but at least there's *something*. Support, in the sense that somebody is actually responsible for the package? (Unlike Hackage, where some packages have a closed-for-nonsubscribers mailing list as 'maintainer'.) (Probably 'etc.', but I can't think of more points at the moment.) -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants