Hello,

Well, I have noticed that when we usually install softwares using distribution's packages, it's often impossible to build manually (./configure, make, make install) something which depends on many librairies. The librairies exist in the system but their lay out depends on distribution.
To resolve this problem, we can install manually all the requiered librairies. But i think it may be conflictual if we had the library built manually and the library from a package.
So, for related softwares (i.e. php+apache+other libs) we sometimes may choose to install them all by packages, or all by hand.

My question is : Is it possible to set up a linux system without any package? only by compiling sources?
If yes, which distrib' is more suitable for this use?

Thanx

I've never used gentoo, but apparently its all from source....u might want to read into that one...

Have you looked into "Linux From Scratch"?

Almost all configure script allow you to specify the location of libraries and such. For instance ./configure --with-win32libdir=/usr/lib/win32 (taken from installing MPlayer). If your distro is setup nicely then most configure scripts may even be able to locate the libraries themselves by using locate, slocate, whereis, which, etc, etc. I have found that the most common problem is when the configure script is expecting a newer version of a dependency that the version you have.

And on this... if you install things from source, they will not get added to your Package Manager's list of installed packages. This can cause havoc! Let's say, for argument sake, that you're running an RPM based distro, you have installed version 1 of the ID3 libraries by using RPM, you then get the source for version 2 and install them manually. If you then try to install a programme with RPM that depends on version 2 of the ID3 libraries, it won't find them! RPM will consult the RPM database of installed files and packages to determine if dependencies are met or not. If you install something from source, it won't get added to the database.

An answer to this is to install from source using something called checkinstall. Basically what it does is it allows you to install files from source by generating an RPM (or DEB or TGZ, etc, etc). This way, even if you install from source the files get added to RPM's list of installed files and packages.

I cannot recommend this highly enough! It has certainly got me out of trouble a few times.