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I still don't understand why folks don't just build things like PHP from source. On either my desktop or production servers building a package missing from APT
by rubyn00bie 7y ago
I still don't understand why folks don't just build things like PHP from source. On either my desktop or production servers building a package missing from APT has never been a problem (on either Debian or Ubuntu, but I strongly prefer Debian). Then you don't have to trust anyone... /shrug
And what's even worse, if you install Docker containers you don't build and manage yourself, you're pretty much right there again with "I don't know or trust" as your means of security.
- babarock 7y agoNot a downvoter, but if you think that compiling from source means you don't have to trust anyone, then I encourage you to read a paper called "Reflections on Trusting Trust" by Ken Thompson. It's a very famous computer science paper, pretty easy to read. Nothing niche or controversial. I'm sure you'll find it interesting.
- gdxhyrd 7y agoThe point is that you don't have to trust anyone outside the source given by the official project you are downloading. The fact that you can't achieve the ideal does not mean we should claim defeat.
- xorcist 7y agoJust to expand on the "build from source" bit, apt-get can not only download packages in source form but also build binary packages in literally one single command. This makes the cases where you want the full Debian build but with a patch or just stepping the version easy. That's useful when you need to patch a package or can't wait for an upstream security fix. Too often I see people building upstream packages "by hand" in those cases. The packaging tools are great and any Linux user is greatly helped by taking a few minutes and learning the basics of apt preference files, package selection and source packages.