any use to build from source?

[Patrick Useldinger]

Giorgos Keramidas wrote:

 > Before I answer to this question, I cannot help noting that you don't
 > *HAVE* to compile everything from source.  In fact, if you install a
 > RELEASE version of FreeBSD and use pkg_add to install the binary,
 > precompiled packages of just the applications you are going to
 > use... there is absolutely no need to rebuild anything from source.

True for the CDs. But once you want to upgrade, things get more 
complicated. For example, I did not find a package for OpenOffice 1.1.1 
in the "offical" places, although OO is certainly an excellent candidate 
for a package. This led me to the conclusion that packages, in the FBSD 
world, are considered less important than the very well maintained ports.

I would prefer it to be the other way round: go for packages, unless you 
want to tweak anything.

 > Now, some of us -- actually, I feel that this is a large percentage of
 > the FreeBSD users, if the amount of questions posted here on this list
 > is of any significance at all -- a great percentage of us likes trimming
 > our installations; we like building our packages with the exact options
 > and feature sets that *we* prefer.  In such cases, having the ability to
 > build from source is absolutely marvelous.

I agree with that argument, you can tailor the compilation. But it's 
probably not systematical, but rather the exception.

I do not agree with an earlier argument, which was that you could change 
the source. I have been programming for 25 years now, I am certain that 
you don't change code, not even in a reasonably sized project, without 
spending a large amount of time.

-pu