Today's Compilation Pop Pickers.

One thing I really hate about Linux - non-packaged applications which must be self compiled.

I have been coming up against this a lot over the last few weeks, trying to build newer software versions than are found in the repositories.  Unlike Windows, where you can just download and run an executable file with no hassle,  with Linux, you're expected to do some of the hard work yourself.  This has its benefits in that the software is customised and optimised for the specific distribution and libraries that you're using, but has the disadvantages that often, the compilation tool is looking for and expecting certain components, calls or versions.   If your 'make' fails, you have to read through the errors, fix whatever's broken, then try again.  Which is fine if its just one module that needs updating, but more often than not, that module requires a dependency issue resolved, and then the next one has issues and so on and so forth,  ad infinitum it seems.

All this is the reason why I choose distro's with decent package support - Debian based Distro's simply use 'aptitude install packagename' and RedHat Style Distro's use 'yum install packagename'.  Aptitude seems to be a little better at resolving dependencies than Yum, but both seem to do a similar thing.   However,  the issue with the package repositories is that it relies on someone compiling an application for your distribution and confirming that it works, and then submitting it to the repository.  This can lead to significant or non-existent delays between software updates, meaning that for a lot of 'bleeding edge' applications,  a certain amount of hacking, head bashing, blood, sweat and tears is required to get the Penguin to do what you want.

Anyway, Back to trying to work out why ntop 3.3.9 won't recognise lib_pcap properly.  Grrr.  Any idea's anyone?