dovecot - Aug 2017 - new install on Centos 7

>> Or consider compiling it yourself from source.  It may be more work,
but
>> you get complete control over your versioning, your package
dependencies,
>> etc.  If a bug that affects you gets fixed on a bleeding edge version
>> (or is only available as a patch), you can fix it right away rather
than
>> waiting for the package maintainer to catch up to it.
>
> Or just ping me in #ghettoforge on Freenode and I'll generally get it
> fixed quickly, if I haven't already seen it on the list and fixed it.
Not all package maintainers are as responsive as you are.  I've lost
count of the number of problems reported here, where people could not
move from version 1.x, because their repo did not have anything newer, or
for reason out of their control, they can't update because it would/could
break something else.
> There are downsides to compiling yourself.
To be sure.  (Incidentally, auto-updates are sometimes *not* what
people want -- stability of a working system is paramount over
anything that might jeopardize that.)

Compiling from source is not everybody's cup of tea, but it does allow
complete control over the build.  Repo-packages usually are built with
kitchen-sink options, which may not suit everyone.

Joseph Tam <jtam.home at gmail.com>

On 11/08/17 10:42, Joseph Tam wrote:
>> Or just ping me in #ghettoforge on Freenode and I'll generally get
it
>> fixed quickly, if I haven't already seen it on the list and fixed
it.
> 
> Not all package maintainers are as responsive as you are.  I've lost
> count of the number of problems reported here, where people could not
> move from version 1.x, because their repo did not have anything newer, or
> for reason out of their control, they can't update because it
would/could
> break something else.
Oh, I know, and I'll take that as a compliment :-)
>> There are downsides to compiling yourself.
> 
> To be sure.  (Incidentally, auto-updates are sometimes *not* what
> people want -- stability of a working system is paramount over
> anything that might jeopardize that.)
Right, but I didn't say "auto-updates", I said regular updates,
which
could be auto-updates but could also just be regular running of "yum
update" by a human who can intervene if it blows up.  It could also be a
fully controlled test environment where someone does full regression
testing before pushing updates out to 500 other servers in a farm.
> Compiling from source is not everybody's cup of tea, but it does allow
> complete control over the build.  Repo-packages usually are built with
> kitchen-sink options, which may not suit everyone.
I would encourage that if you want to go that route that you actually
build your own packages and install them rather than installing directly
from source.  This takes advantage of the many features of package
systems such as the ability to verify installs in case tampering is
suspected, dependency resolution, and the ability to easily revert to a
prior version if something goes wrong.

I am more than happy for anyone who wants to do this to download and use
the .src.rpm files from GhettoForge as a base for their own package builds.


Peter