[rt-users] Why I am recommending 3.6 over 3.8 to my boss

[Josh Narins]

> I CAN do a manual install of RT3.8 using the Best Practical install
> scripts.  It is not terribly hard.  However, the long-term costs of
> this are large.  The install scripts put all the binaries,
> configuration files, and libraries in the wrong places for RHEL/CentOS,
> and working outside the package manager means files could be clobbered
> at any time.

They are never clobbered with:

./configure --prefix=/opt/local

My /opt/local is more complicated, and I have a couple directories like this: ./builds/rt/rt-3.8.8 and ./Sources/rt/rt-3.8.8. In the latter directory I execute

> ./configure --prefix=/opt/local/builds/rt/rt-3.8

Then I softlink /opt/local/builds/rt/rt-3.8.8 to /opt/local/rt and run a script I wrote which symlinks everything under each subdirectory of /opt/local/builds/rt/rt-3.8.8 to /opt/local/bin, /opt/local/etc, et cetera. I end up with /opt/local/etc/RT_Config.pm -> /opt/local/builds/rt/rt-3.8.8/etc/RT_Config.pm

Technically, when I need to migrate a package to a new version, the first steps (unpack and install) will not affect anything and I just change the symlinks and rerun my script. In fact, the reverse course is even easier than normal package managers, since I just restore the original symlinks and I am back to the old configuration.

I only do this for code for production use. I do not do this for any system libraries. Personally I was never comfortable with the idea of my Operating System deciding when to upgrade apache for me.

Currently, for RT, I have perl, postgresql, apache, mod_perl and rt installed this way. I get to use perl-5.12.2 as a bonus. This lets me use "say", "given/when" and named captures in regular expressions, all new with 5.10.




Josh Narins
Director of Application Development
SeniorBridge
845 Third Ave
7th Floor
New York, NY 10022
Tel: (212) 994-6194
Mobile: (917) 488-6248
Fax: (212) 994-4260
jnarins at seniorbridge.com

SeniorBridge
Managing Complex Chronic Care
http://www.seniorbridge.com



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