Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
--On Sunday, October 18, 2009 10:28 AM +1300 Cliff Pratt <enkidu@cliffp.com> wrote:Thanks for the information, Michael. Unfortunately our policy is to use packages where ever possible. This also means that the third party product which we have on top of OpenLDAP which our application fits on top of may not support the latest releases of OpenLDAP and BDB. (I'd have to research that).Your policy is seriously flawed. Particularly when it comes to using the packages built by RedHat at that time. They have started getting better more recently. Also, Linux distributions have different objectives when they build their packages then people who run production level LDAP servers. See:<http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/1456.html>
Hi Quanah,I'm not going to start a debate on packages versus compiled from source, since this is not an appropriate forum. However that article misses a point or two. I'll just say the following and drop the topic of compiling from source.
Firstly, distro owners do NOT just freeze a package. They freeze at say version x.y.z of a package, then they backport fixes to it and produce a package x.y.z-v, where the '-v' indicates their modified version of the package. There's a good chance that by the time that v is 5 or 6 that the major problems will be fixed.
Secondly, I pay for support. If I do not use the supplied version of the software, then I do not get support. You might make the point that I should therefore go to the distro vendor for support, and not bother this list, and the point is a good one, and I will be pursuing that route.
Thirdly, if I were to listen to all the suppliers of the packages that I use I should compile every single one of them! Don't get me wrong - I totally understand that approach, and all things being equal I would take that approach myself, but it is not possible for me to do that and still have a life!
Cheers, Cliff