Tracking files of non rpm packages

[Calum]

hello.

what methods are there for tracking the files of packages that i install which are not rpms? as you know, not everything is available as an rpm and anyway, i want to use slackware so will likely want to keep track of more than one type of package on a regular basis.

Basically i want to know if there's an established way to keep track of what's been installed and how, for future uninstallation in as clean a way as possible. If i want to upgrade something or if i want to install something that depends on something else, i would like to make as little trouble for myself (and have as few conflicts) as possible. Some of the things i want to install are source code only, but if i use slackware, many packages will have been installed as pkgtool packages during system setup, and if i use red hat (which i currently do) then many will be rpm packages.

is it worth installing rpm in slackware or will this just confuse source packages that depend on rpms i have installed and vice versa?

what's the best way to manage the installation of packages in more than one format in your opinion?

[Doogee]

slackware includes a tool set thing called pkgtool which uses slackware packages, which come in *.tgz form, although there not not regular tarballs, these are very easy to install/uninstall.

the easiest is probably the command "# pkgtool" which seems to infact track the way of slackpacks.

Slackpacks are the best to use with slack, but not easily found. I have usually been installing from source and im yet to find a good way of tracking them.

[Nobber]

You can get some ideas on how to manage source installations from the LFS FAQ. I haven't used any of these schemes, though, so I can't recommend one over another.

[Calum]

good link, nobber, i thought about CVS (which i completely do not understand) but it looks like it is not for dialup users like me, or for just any old source packages either.

i hope to install slackpackages but then to install source packages afterwards and i am thinking even of trying to put rpm on there (but will this be a headache because the rpm database will not record glibc6 and so on?)