"Doug Nichols" <doug_x_nichols@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:78443f00.0311210428.6c1f6a6e@posting.google.c om...

> This is great! Thanks everyone who responded. I have been slowly
> removing the rpm's so I am not really using rpm anymore, otherwise rpm
> would be a great option- I am trying to install/compile each package
> from scratch. binstats seems to do exactly what I want.
>
> thanks again.
> dn

If you discard package management, expect problems when updating. Tools like
"tripwire" can help detect changes in critical files, and tools like "epkg"
can help you keep multiple versions of newly-built software online and
switch from one to the other as needed.

But if you're going to work in the RPM-based world, I strongly urge you to
build your own SRPM's (which is fairly easy) and use those to install and
uninstall packages. This will ease package verification and update
procedures.