Advantage / Disadvantage to install asterisk from CVS was: [Asterisk-Dev] Asterisk run as non root

[Paul]

Joseph wrote:

>On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 18:12 -0400, Paul wrote:
>  
>
>>Joseph wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I'm follows installation instruction from wiki and there is section
>>>"Running Asterisk not as root"
>>>It is not difficult to follow, but time taking.
>>>
>>>Why isn't this section implemented as in cvs if it is considered as
>>>security issue?  I'm sure it wouldn't take much time to write a small
>>>script that would change all the file permission and ownership during
>>>installation.
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>It runs as user asterisk when using the debian packages. If you are 
>>compiling and installing it yourself, you are responsible to do the 
>>things that a package maintainer for any linux distro is generally 
>>expected to do.
>>    
>>
>
>So what other think are advantages / disadvantages of compiling from CVS
>vs installing it from distribution.
>
>Distribution Advantages:
>1.)  Easy installation,
>2.) All configuration (permission/ownership) is taken care of.
>3.) Easy upgrades.
>
>Distribution Disadvantages:
>1.) Slow response to bug fixes. 
>
>Compiling from CVS Advantages:
>1.) Faster bug fixing process.
>2.) Ability to communicate with developers directly.
>
>Compiling from CVS Disadvantages:
>1.) Installation require few extra steps (not that difficult)
>2.) Configuration (permission/ownership) is Do It Yourself; hence pron
>to errors and it takes longer to upgrade.
>
>  
>
Regardless of advantages/disadvantages, the point I was making is that 
when you take a stock debian/fedora/suse/whatever distro and make 
changes you now have a modified distro and you are the manager of that. 
It is up to you to do a proper integration of your locally built 
software on your platform. What I usually do is look at the way the 
debian maintainers packaged something before compiling my own local 
version. I'm sure the same technique applies with any linux distro as 
long as they have some official asterisk packages for you to look at. If 
they don't, you have to study the way other distros do it. I have 
unpacked rpm files and studied them when the package I wanted was not 
even in debian unstable yet.

There are free software packages that build nicely on a multitude of 
platforms. That's because lots of users tested it and submitted good bug 
reports, often with patches.