Re: [Gnumed-devel] Re: Which distributions (distros) of Linux are recommended for GnuMed?

[Jim Busser]

On May 31, 2004, at 4:46 AM, Andreas Tille wrote:

> > > Should it be easy, and advantageous, to advocate for IT people to
> > > download, examine and learn from a debian package as an alternative 
> > > or
> > > adjunct to installing from source if for some reason installing from
> > > source is a good idea?
> What do you mean by "learn from a Debian package"?

I meant that if a doctor's local IT support people have Debian 
installed but ordinarily prefer to install application software from 
source, or are not using Debian, or if the state of the CVS updating 
makes it desirable over a package, in any of these cases there exists 
additional "information value" in or from the package, for example 
where the various resources need to go, how various packages within 
need to be configured, etc.

Also not clear to me (early in my learning ) is any mutual exclusivity 
between running from a Debian package vs from CVS. For example would a 
version of GnuMed contained within the package (once it is set up to 
run) be configured somewhat differently to GnuMed from source. In that 
case, having installed from a Debian package, it becomes difficult or 
complicated to update using the CVS? I am thinking for example any 
fixes should be important before the next package has been prepared.

Also are the Debian packages likely to be only for fresh installations? 
Or if, for example, any of the database structures or other files 
should change in a way that they should not simply over-write the old 
ones, would scripts required for correct updating be part of the CVS, 
and / or need to be prepared for  - - - and be included in - - -  each 
new package?

All of this IMNO (i my naive opinion) becomes important if people begin 
to try to use one part of the program while others work on other parts 
of the program that may interact. One would hate for example to lose or 
corrupt useful data (even if it is test data) on account of something 
being updated.