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I tend to install quite a lot of packages with ./configure --prefix=$HOME && make && make install. Why can't I do this as easily with dpkg or yum? Or if I somehow can, what is the way to do that?

d33tah
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    Are you asking why non-root users are not permitted to install packages using dpkg/yum ? – steve Jul 27 '15 at 18:25
  • Yes and/or why was it decided not to include such functionality. – d33tah Jul 27 '15 at 18:44
  • Well, it would be like giving the lunatics the keys to the asylum.....if anyone could install any package, they could easily bypass the security lovingly applied by the systems administrators. – steve Jul 27 '15 at 19:02
  • @steve: You're missing the point. I'm asking about installing the packages in my home directory. – d33tah Jul 27 '15 at 19:03
  • Do you just want a package manager to allow relocatable install ? That's there, for example see http://rpm.org/api/4.4.2.2/relocatable.html – steve Jul 27 '15 at 19:05
  • @steve: That's closer to what I want, but I wish there was something like this for `yum` or `apt-get` rather than `rpm` or `dpkg`. Having dependencies install themselves is nice. – d33tah Jul 27 '15 at 19:07
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    It might be that I committed a duplicate: http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/5535/26489 – d33tah Jul 27 '15 at 19:24

1 Answers1

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Some package managers support relocation. RPM in particular supports relocation, where the package itself has been built to support it. More information on rpm --relocate at rpm.org:Relocatable packages

A comment by the maintainer of yum in 2008 (Seth Vidal) suggests that support for relocation within yum is unlikely. yum mailing list:Yum relocate option

steve
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