Re: Binary release announcements?

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Tuesday, February 17, 2004 at 08:36:43 (+0000), Andy Jones wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Binary release announcements?
>
> For my own part, there are some programs I am comfortable compiling
> and some I most certainly am not.  It so happens that CVS falls in the
> former category (now), but I can certainly sympathise with people who
> put it in the latter.

I think you've got this all wrong.

People who don't want, or can't, compile their own programs should be
looking to their software integration "vendor" for such support.  If
those people don't already have someone doing their software integration
for them then it's long past time and they should think seriously about
finding someone they can trust to help them out.

> At the end of the day, people choose to install binaries for one
> reason: because if the program fails to work, then you know it's
> nothing you have done.

That will only be true in the most trivial of cases.  With something
even slightly complex, such as CVS, successful operation depends a great
deal on many of the steps that come after a proper compilation and
linking of the original source code.

There's also still the whole issue of trust.  As I understand it the
folks producing the source release don't also produce all of the
binaries, and I'm not sure how much they trust those who do produce the
binaries, nor if they've ever declared the level of their trust.  At
least with the source you can read it and you can compare it with
previous versions that you've come to trust (especially in this case
where you can use the tool in question to do those comparisons).

-- 
                                                Greg A. Woods

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