after you get it down, it doesn't take much more time than changing the program name and version number, select the documentation, and configure --help | less and dumping those options in the Slackbuild template.

That is, for those programs that need only configure/make/make install. Still not as easy as checkinstall, but nothing out of this world. And you get really nice packages.

IMHO, linuxpackages.net is good if you just want to "test drive" a program. If it is something you plan to use regularly slackbuilds is the way to go.

Brian

There is also Learning bash from Oreilly Press. A darn good book to get scripting down. I'm not an advanced scripter by any means, but the slackbuilds for most things seem pretty straight forward.

There is a really nice Howto linked at www.slackbuilds.org too.

I've never tried linuxpackages.net, but SlackBuilds has never given me a problem. If you use SlackBuilds, don't forget to copy the newly built package (from /tmp) for safekeeping.

I usually grab a package where it is most up-to-date. Eg, I downloaded Wine 0.9.42 from Slacky.eu, because there was no Slackware package available on winehq.org, yet.

When I need to adapt a package I appreciate the SlackBuilds.org approach. Eg, with the script from there it was a breeze to localize OpenOffice.org. I now have OOo with a German GUI, although there's no localized Slackware binary package available for Slackware.

Then there's stuff for which there isn't even a SlackBuild script available, like my favourite drawing programe, TGIF. Thanks to gnashley's brilliant src2pkg this was a no-brainer to compile and install!

And LinuxPackages.net is still the largest repository, and some of the maintainers are doing a real good job. I use some of Ken Zalewsky's packages. Although Ken doesn't include SlackBuild scripts, his packages all install and work flawlessly.

One area where all the various approaches may differ, is the features selected at compile time. Eg, the Kaffeine package from Slacky.eu is usually compiled without support for DVB. Now, that's exactly what I use Kaffeine mainly for. For this reason I rely on the Kaffeine package from LinuxPackages.net, when it's available in time. Otherwise I use the SlackBuilds.org script. However, version 0.8.7 is available from Slacky.eu, but not yet from LinuxPackages.net or SlackBuilds.org.

So speed and the more or less consequent inclusion of SlackBuild scripts are one difference, another one is the selection of compile-time features.

In short: It's good to have all these approaches and repositories!

gargamel

Agreed. I've also used a lot of the build scripts at SlackBuilds.org. Robby and the guys do nice work indeed! I rarely get packages from linuxpackages.net. My main places for getting packages are SlackBuilds.org, Slackware.com, or I'll compile from source.