Re: Re: compiling from tarballs

[michael <michael selectrec net>]

On 1 Jan 2000, Dave Reed wrote:
> Date: 1 Jan 2000 01:17:26 -0000
> To: twilson@csufresno.edu
> From: Dave Reed <dreed@capital.edu>
> Subject: Re: compiling from tarballs
> 
> > Resent-Cc: 
> > MBOX-Line: From gnome-list-request@gnome.org  Fri Dec 31 20:00:32 1999
> > From: Todd Wilson <twilson@csufresno.edu>
> > 
> > Please pardon me if this is a stupid question, but I couldn't find an
> > explanation in the FAQ or Getting Started pages.  I have a RH 6.1
> > system and have been wanting to use some of the recent releases
> > announced on this list -- e.g., gnumeric-0.46.  When I go to the RH
> > Package Installation page at www.gnome.org, I find that the version
> > there is gnumeric-0.38.  Vaguely remembering it being said that recent
> > releases are only available in tarball, I go to the Installation from
> > Tarball page, and, indeed, gnumeric-0.46 is there.  When I go to
> > install it, I find that I need libglade-0.11.  Fair enough; I download
> > and install that first.  When gnumeric's configure complains again
> > that my libglade is still too old, I go back and find an instruction
> > on the download page that implies that I have to remove the libglade
> > package that came with my distribution first.  When I try to do this,
> > of course, I get a message about many broken dependencies.
> > 
> > My question:  Does this mean that I'm basically going to have to
> > remove most of my gnome packages, re-install them from tarball, do
> > something to my /etc/ld.so.conf, and possibly other stuff just to try
> > out one program (gnumeric-0.46)?  Or, possibly, that I'm either going
> > to have to go all tarball or all RPM, not a mixture of both?  Is there
> > a document that I haven't seen that explains this in some detail (/usr
> > vs. /usr/local, gnome-config getting confused, etc.)?
> 
> 
> I find the easiest thing to do is put the newer versions in /usr/local
> and put /usr/local/bin first in the PATH variable and LD_LIBRARY_PATH
> variable so that the configure scripts find the newer version and
> older version will still work (no need to remove the older versions).
> I'm still running RH 5.2 with the newer versions of gtk/gnome in
> /usr/local using this method.

You may also run configure --prefix=/usr
This should put everything in correct location but it replace the older
Stuff. 
> 
> > Related question:  I also vaguely remember it being said that the
> > process of producing RPMs from tarballs is not very complicated, but
> > that, because developers understandably didn't want to be in the RPM
> > business, there was bound to be some lag time before they get produced
> > (eight releases worth, in the case of gnumeric).  Is there any reason
> > why scripts cannot be written that will create the necessary RPMs
> > automatically from the tarballs and place the resulting files in the
> > ftp area, so as to eliminate this lag time?  Or, more likely, am I
> > completely misunderstanding the situation?
> 
> It's just a matter of someone creating the SPEC file for it - I'm not
> a RPM expert so I just usually put all things from .tar.gz files in
> /usr/local and don't worry if my RPM database isn't upto date for
> things that I want newer versions than the distribution includes.
> 
> HTH,
> Dave
> 
> 
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