Installing a compiler by default

[Stephan Hermann]

On Friday 09 June 2006 23:30, Peter Garrett wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Jun 2006 22:54:32 +0200
> Stephan Hermann <sh at sourcecode.de> wrote:
>
> [snipped but not ignored]
>
> > It's not telling the world: Users are idiots, but to give the
> > people the opportunity to do something, which they normally don't
> > need, with open eyes and with the thought, that they're at sometime
> > on their own.
>
> OK Stephan :) Your post makes more sense than most of the arguments
> put forward against installing build-essential.
>
> Perhaps I'm giving users more credit for thought than I should - I
> was certainly around on IRC when the backports fiasco was in full
> swing.
>
> Nevertheless - is there evidence that users of distros that include
> gcc and friends have more troubles?

Cynical answer: check gentoo 
Serious answer: Check the support channel. 
Everybody, who comes online with the question: "Hey, how do I compile 
the nvidia drivers from source, because I heard that these drivers are 
better then the shipped ones" will get the answer "apt-get install 
build-essential". After some time, they are coming back and finally 
screwed up their system, because something went wrong. 
Or they compiled, because of a "good advise" of their good 
friend "Iknowhim Verywell",some other piece of software and overwrite 
their KDE, Gnome, whatever and after this, the good friend "Iknowhim 
Verywell" just flew to 
the "LonleyIslandWherePhonesAreForbiddenAndNamedVoiceMailbox" and can't 
give them the support they need to fix all their breakage.
Those people, most of the time without a clue (that's not negative) 
about what they are doing there, don't need a new driver or don't need 
a new KDE, they just need some advice how to achieve a special goal. 
This goal would have been achieved with the right question, and the 
right question is not "how can I comile a driver or some sort of new 
version of software".

> Regarding the issue of the packaging sytem not knowing about compiled
> apps - I encourage the use of the "checkinstall" tool to get around
> that to some degree, although I know it isn't a panacea.

checkinstall is not a solution. Better it is to ask people on #ubuntu, 
where the packaging people of ubuntu are on the irc network, jumping 
into #ubuntu-motu and asking them for help. 

> Thought provoking and sensible post - thanks. I still think including
> build-essential won't result in a massive increase of problems, but
> your case is worthy of consideration.

Many people won't even notice that a compiler is installed, because they 
don't use it. But counting those people would result in "100:1", but 
the 1 who needs it, do know where to find the compiler. So, the actual 
situation is IMHO the best.

regards,

\sh
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