difference between pkgadd and compiling

[allen1994]

I've installed some free software from sunfreeware.com that's already packaged. It's simple just to do a pkgadd command and it does the install. When I compile it from a source it's not so simple and I want to know why is that.
Ex. I tried to compile the rrdtool today and I'm getting cryptic error messages and it failed. I'm slowly learning Unix and it can get frustrating at times. Any good explanation is welcome.

 

[bfitzmai]

Allen.
In general, an application that is specifically for Sun is installed with pkgadd. If the application is used on multiple platforms (Sun, HPUX etc), you usually have to modify config files to indicate what platform you are using and then compile.

 

[Annihilannic]

The reason why compiling is harder than adding a package is because with a package someone has already compiled the software for you.

Compiling is difficult because software is often developed on other operating systems, and it depends on a lot of development tools being available on your system, such as the compiler itself, the make utility, makefile and configuration generators, header files for all of the libraries used, etc.

Also there are often various bugs in source code and subtle incompatibilities between slightly different versions of different source packages, and many configuration options for each the compilation of each source package which may or may not work on your operating system, etc.

Annihilannic.

 

[allen1994]

Thanks for the information. My boss want me to setup a network monitoring tool called Orca. I spent a week to get the Orca and the rest of the Perl modules including RRdtool to compile.
I encountered different errors each time but persistent paid off. The web page and stats are working and that's just the beginning and will require more tweaking. I do feel good now for a moment that I was able to do it and did not give up. Thanks again.

 

[dandan123]

sunfreeware has both the compiled version and the source codes, so is there an advantage in using the source code/compiling ?

Why else would they have both ?

 

[Annihilannic]

They have both because they are obliged by most open source licence agreements, for example the GPL

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html,

to provide the source with the software package.

That way, should you find a bug or identify a missing feature, using the source code you can fix or improve the software yourself, then submit a patch to the community so that everyone can benefit.

Annihilannic.