[arch-general] First Time Arch w/ Gnome Installed

[Brendan Long]

On 01/27/2010 03:47 PM, Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-01-27 at 16:43 -0600, Burlynn Corlew Jr wrote:
>   
>> 2010/1/27 Ng Oon-Ee <ngoonee at gmail.com>
>>
>>     
>>> [snip]
>>> Bad advise, IMHO. yaourt is a helper, not meant to be a pacman
>>> replacement. To Andrea, you should learn to download the PKGBUILD and
>>> all accompanying files first (to a directory you have write access to)
>>> and how to edit PKGBUILDs and run makepkg. Once you've got passing
>>> familiarity with that then using yaourt does save time.
>>>
>>> Basically, if you start off with yaourt, you're screwed if things break
>>> somewhere down the line, since you won't know what's happening behind
>>> the scenes, as it were.
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>> I agree with this a 100%. I do not mind people using automated package
>> builders, but you need to be aware of whats going on. The IRC channel
>> regularly gets people that have run into exactly this, people being told to
>> use yaourt initially then when a build fails they have no idea how to
>> troubleshoot. I'm really not convinced automated builders are very k.i.s.s.,
>> but we are a binary based distro so I won't get into that.
>>     
> My concern is not necessarily KISS (its open to interpretation much of
> the time) but that in Arch, users MUST know what's going on in their
> system, without too much abstraction.
>
>   
The difference between yaourt and building yourself isn't that significant.

Without yaourt:
- Download all files to a directory
- Type "makepkg"
- Type "pacman -U packagename.pkg.tar.gz"

With yaourt:
- Type "yaourt -S packagename"

It's important to now how PKGBUILD files work (and read them when you
install from the AUR), but all yaourt does is simplify minor steps. The
most major step (reading the PKGBUILD) isn't forced on the AUR, but is
suggested WITH BIG SCARY WORDS with yaourt. Just my thoughts on the matter.

-Brendan Long