Six days until release. Thinking of a slightly unorthodox install.

[SteveRiley]

I haven't read the apt-build man pages yet, but doesn't adding "install" to the "--build-only" switch seem contradictory

I wanted to see the package get created but not actually installed. An equivalent, probably more sensible, command is

apt-build build-source nano

Now I think this downloads pre-compiled dependencies. So are you really building from source? Take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit holes goes? ldd /usr/bin/programname will show you the libraries an executable is linked to... You don't want to do that anyway. The *-dev packages are usually very small. The libraries you are linking have all the meat and you need those to run the program.

Much of the knowlege around compiling from source is still new to me. I know I have some catch-up learning to do, including what those -dev files actually do.

[blobfish]

I know I have some catch-up learning to do, including what those -dev files actually do.

I get the feeling you got a bad vibe from post. Not my intention, sorry. I got the impression that you were doing your 12.04 OS install from source and not just your end-user applications. I am no expert! In fact I will take back my previous statement about the size of the *-dev package. After doing some "dpkg -L package", I see that I had forgot about the header files and the library files. Can be pretty big. Even with that reminder, I still wouldn't uninstall the dev packages. I personally have never installed so many packages that I noticed any performance or disk space problems. Have fun!

[SteveRiley]

Heh, no I didn't get a bad vibe or anything. Interestingly enough, my original thinking was, in fact, to build the entire OS from source. So it's likely that I'll have to keep those -dev packages around anyway.

[GreyGeek]

If the updates consist of patches applied to the -dev files you'll have to keep the -dev files around so the patches can be applied to them. This also suggests that patches cannot be skipped, because subsequent patches may depend on changes made by previous patches. Even so, I've decided to scrub my Sony box and install "from source" after the final Kubuntu 12.04 is released.