[mythtv-users] Putting a toe in the CVS water

[Phill Edwards]

I've got my MythTV machine all up and running using Jarod's guide and
FC2 ATRPMs. Excellent work you guys!

I'm now thinking of downloading the latest stuff from CVS, compiling
and installing etc, but I'm VERY nervous about doing this in case I
stuff up my beautiful MythTV system. As we don't have a VCR any more
my wife would not be happy - and I'd be heartbroken! However, there do
seem to be some good things in CVS that I'd like - such as better
commercial flagging which doesn't work well for Australian TV under
MythTV 0.16. I want to understand a few things better before I start:

1) ATRPMs installs into /usr but all the mailing list stuff I could
find talked about keeping different versions under /usr/local and
using symlinks to switch between versions with tools like Stow, Encap,
OpenPKG. There is a  HOWTO at
http://www.mythtv.info/moin.cgi/UpgradeToCvsHowTo but it doesn't go
into much detail. What to do if I want to install CVS stuff into
/usr/local but all the existing ATRPM stuff is in /usr?

2) Do I _really_ have to obliterate the existing mythtv install (the
above HOWTO says to do rpm -qa | grep myth | xargs rpm -e)? This seems
a bit drastic to me. Isn't there a way of keeping the ATRPM install as
a fall-back/safety net if I stuff up with CVS?

3) Perhaps I'm worrying too much? Most of my effort has probably been
getting drivers, lirc, X modelines, MythTV settings, modules.conf,
peripheral scripts etc working. If I go to CVS are we really just
talking about a couple of dozen of MythTV executables that will either
work or not, and if they don't I can just go back a version as all the
other stuff is unaffected? Is it less risky and painful than I think?

4) If I do this, do I have to say goodbye to ATRPMs for ever? What
will happen, for example, if I want to go to FC3 and ATRPMs seemss the
easiest way to do that - will I be able to do it?

Any advice, pros & cons etc anyone can give me would be great.

Thanks,
Phill