Installing Packages

[Jonathan Hutchins]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Duane Attaway [mailto:dattaway at dattaway.org]

> Don't forget that gentoo's portage system can be installed on Redhat,
> Suse, Slack, or any other linux distribution.  The same goes 
> for gentoo:  
> apt-get, RPM, etc., are often installed on gentoo to take advantage of
> other distribution's packages.  

Ooh, there's a recipe for disaster.  I got one machine so bollixed up one
time that I had to do a full re-install to fix it, because it was a RedHat
machine and I installed Mandrake RPMs on it.

Different distribution locate critical files in different parts of the file
system.  They handle things like starting deamons, where user-accessible
software is, and how libraries are stored and linked differently.
Installing a package that was intended for another system can really make a
mess, unless the packager a) tests carefully for where things already are,
or b) has built the package to be used with more than one system.

>From what I've seen here I guess that gentoo compiles everything it
installs, which is usually safer.  The compile will at least fail if the
package is incompatible with that distribution, and a well made package can
adapt itself during compile.

Pre-compiled binaries, though, should only be installed on the distribution
they're meant for unless you're very careful so that you can back them out.
If you come up against one that requires a dozen dependent packages and you
install them all, you may not be so lucky.