Why server Software in Linux needs to be compiled and installed

Why do server software need to be compiled and installed? A widely circulated saying is that the compilation and installation performance is better, in fact, this is a rumor.

Server CPU fact has been monopolized by Intel, so several models, compiled to generate the machine code is the same. Intel has advertised its own compilation tools. Intel C + + Compiler has a 10%-20% increase in performance compared to GCC, which is an ad that is rarely used by the production environment, and it has to be charged.

Performance is really not a problem, such as the Strip command can greatly reduce the size of the executable file, but I have installed thousands of times the software, have not seen anyone in the installation script to use.

The real reason why the software needs to be compiled and installed is as follows 3 points:

1. The software needs to be configured during compilation , such as nginx, it is necessary to specify which Module,php,apache are included when compiling.
The same is the database, MySQL by compiling the installation, because to customize the storage engine (whether to support InnoDB. , while SQLite is rarely compiled, it is directly downloaded binary files to use.

2. The software needs a unified installation path , each team will own the installation directory contract, some like to be installed under the/opt/, some like to install in the/usr/local/, compile the installation can easily specify these paths (configure--PREFIX=XXX)
3. Need the latest version , the software warehouse version is generally low, this reason is not sufficient, the production environment tends to be conservative, do not pursue the latest version, but for geek, this may be the most important reason
After figuring out why, it's easy to decide whether to compile or download:

Nginx/apache/php/mysql Compiling and installing
Python/ruby/java Direct Download

< reference: From Network ...>

Why server Software in Linux needs to be compiled and installed