[csw-users] New to Blastwave

[Jeffery Small]

In local.blastwave.users you write:

>I'm new to blastwave and am looking to convert some of the packages I 
>have built myself and/or downloaded elsewhere to blastwave. I have a 
>couple of simple questions;

>Is it necessary or desirable to remove other versions of these packages, 
>installed elsewhere?
>If you miss one what is the likely downside?
>Do blastwave packages check for Solaris package dependencies?


Hey Robert!

It's probably not a serious problem if you have multiple copies of some
software on your system.  The CSW (blastwave) packages are very good about
being self-contained to the /opt/csw directory.  there are very few files
that are installed outside of this location with the infrequent exception
of some things that may end up in /etc, /etc/dt (for gnome, etc.) or
modifications made to file in /etc/init.d.

However, having multiple copies of software can lead to confusion.  You
might find that you install a newer version of something from blastwave
and then it turns out that you are still running the older version of the
software because it is located earlier in your PATH.  (I just did that very
thing yesterday with the vim editor!)  Also, you might find that you are
looking at the manual page for an older version of the software and end up
getting incorrect information.

Because of this, I have decided to bite the bullet, track down the old
software and remove it.  If I'm installing a duplicate package from
blastwave, I usually rename my old binaries, library directories and manual
pages <name>.OLD.  I then install the blastwave package and test it out.
If everything works OK, I then go back and delete the *.OLD files from the
system.

One exception to this rule has been the gnome software.  I found that
there are problems running CSW's gnome 2.6 package on my dual-headed
box, although the 2.6 gnome applications fix many problems over Sun's
2.0 distribution.  So I left Sun's gnome 2.0 packages installed and also
installed CSW's gnome 2.6.  At the login window you will find entries for
both 2.0 and 2.6 sessions.  If you are using gnome, try 2.6 and see if it
works for you.  In my case I still use the 2.0 window manager, but I have
created many menu entries where I specifically access the applications
under /opt/csw/bin.  There are still bugs in gnome, but this has worked
out pretty well.  I hope when gnome 2.8 is released more problems will
disappear.

If you're a boater, check out the "xtide" package I recently added.  It
will give you a really nice tide clock and you can print out your own tide
charts.  I also recently added a "spider" solitaire card game and the "par"
paragraph reformatter which does much more than fmt(1).  (I just added par
last night so it may not show up for a few more days.)

Regards,
-- 
Jeff

C. Jeffery Small           CJSA LLC                     (206) 232-3338
jeff at cjsa.com              7000 E Mercer Way, Mercer Island, WA  98040

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