Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

My experience is that software that installs via curl|bash tends to ignore my preferences as expressed via $PREFIX/DESTDIR, $XDG_{CACHE,CONFIG,DATA}_HOME, etc. It'll install who-knows-where and probably leave dotfiles all over my home directory.

Maybe curl|bash is functionally equivalent to git clone && ./configure && make && make install, but my bet is on the one providing a standard install flow to be a better guest on my system.



The curl|bash might actually clone a repo and build it. Your concern is a different one.


Yes, it could. But it that was the case, the site would say one can just clone the repo and build it instead of sending everybody into the curl route.


Some of them do say that.


yep, and that would be bad! If clone / build steps are separate, I can at least verify the hash looks sane, or mirror it locally, etc..

In the curl|bash approach, all of this is lost.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: