[PlanetCCRMA] PlanetCCRMA is ruining my life (or at least my machine)

[Don Levey]

planetccrma-admin@ccrma.Stanford.EDU wrote:
> I think that "I am ruining my own life and machine by mixing
> repositories" would be a much more appropriate subject for your
> message. 

Fair enough - I realised after I sent the message that I forgot the smiley.

> The main purpose of a distribution is putting together a
> series of packages that are mutually compatible so the end user does
> not have to worry about interaction among the different versions of
> those packages.
> 
> Ffmpeg is under heavy development and its api seems to change with
> every build. It is thus a highly volatile package and very prone to
> create version compatibility issues.
> 
Ah, I admit I didn't realise that it was quite this volatile.

> It is not reasonable for a distribution that pretends to be stable to
> keep track of bleeding edge packages so, if you mix repositories to
> include the most up to date versions you are, let's say, inviting
> trouble, and it is no one's responsability other than yours.
> 
> That said, if you install a ffmpeg from other repo, you will probably
> be better off if you install all the packages that depend on it from
> the same repo. But there is no way of predicting how this can affect
> to other ccrma packages, since they are probably built under different
> conditions (i.e., compiler or depending libraries versions.)
> 
> Keeping your linux up to date is a demanding and many times
> disappointing task. Bleeding edge is usually best achieved if you
> build from source, so you may want to give a try to some distro like
> Gentoo. Good luck,
> 
> Luis

Given my needs at the moment, then, perhaps I'll deinstall the PlanetCCRMA software for a while.  I seem to use the other stuff far more often.  Thanks for the help!
 -Don