Debian - Apache help

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 09:37:34PM -0500, Zbigniew Koziol wrote:
> If you want to understand what you are doing, you should compile apache 
> yourself.

Compiling apache teaches you NOTHING about how to configure and use
apache.  It just teaches you something about hunting down libraies and
hoping you get all the right ones in the right versions.  it takes one
skill set to compile and install code and fix any problems.  it is an
entirely different skill set to set up a database, or a web server or an
email server and make it do what you want.  leaving the first one (the
compiling) to those with more experience and the time and interest in
following the changes of a given program's source saves a lot of time
and frustration for those that are more interested in using the program
and just configuring it for their needs.

> No, I do not know if apt-get will do the thing and I do not care to 
> know. Or rpm would do?
> 
> You can always however compile another version and configure it to 
> listen on another port than 80. You may have 64 thousands versions of 
> apache on your machine.

And you can configure any build of apache to run on any port you want.
No need to go and compile it yourself for that.

> I consider all these tricks with apt-get and rpm as a step back in the 
> development of the system and in educating people. It makes also Linux 
> more similar to Windows. I see no big advantage of installing packages 
> over compiling from source code. In both cases people ask questions ;) 
> Questions asked about compiling are more productive.

Actually it would be a major improvement for windows if it actually had
a unified install manager like apt-get/dpkg that actually kepot track of
which file belonged to which program and what libraries and versions it
needed.  The current mess on windows whre people run software from 3rd
parties without considering the consequences is just insane.  And
microsoft encouraging programs to ship updated system libraries is even
more insane.
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