Re: Building gnumeric and dependencies in a separate location.

[Adrian Custer <acuster gmail com>]

Hello,

This is indeed an issue. Fortunately there are several solutions. I
think chroot is overkill for your needs since your situation is common.
The developers often have several versions of gnumeric built and
installed in different locations.

GNOME has several build scripts available, notably jhbuild and garnome,
which can be installed in their own directory tree (away from everything
else). I don't remember the details but the explanation is in the README
files or probably on the net.

The GNUMERIC build system can handle this using the command-line
argument --prefix=... to the autogen/configure scripts. For years I have
built and installed gnumeric and whatever dependencies were required
in /soft/CVS/TEST/ without having any impact on my system. Once built,
to run that gnumeric I then had to adjust both the PATH and the
LD_LIBRARY_PATH environmental variables to first look in that directory
and then in the standard locations. This strategy is:
 1) build with --prefix=/the/alternate/path/
 2) run with a script or command line to expand the PATH and LD_... 
Note that if you have to build dependencies, then these environmental
variables will have to be set during the build of any dependent library.

Alternatively, GNOME has several build scripts available, notably
jhbuild and garnome, which can be installed in their own directory tree
(away from everything else). I don't remember the details but the
explanation is in the README files or probably on the net. These will
often require building from very far down in the stack (below gtk) which
may or may not be what you want. However, you can build these and not
affect your running system.

Hopefully that will help you on your way. 
--adrian

On Sun, 2006-07-09 at 20:34 -0400, Prof J C Nash wrote:
> I've seen a number of msgs on this list about compiling a verion, 
> usually the latest, of Gnumeric. I've tried myself too.
>
> What I haven't found yet, and not only for Gnumeric, is a good how-to on
> actually doing such compiling safely and cleanly without disrupting 
> one's working environment. That is, I have 2 "main" working machines, 
> one running Xandros 3.02, which gets Gnumeric 1.4.3 (sigh!) using 
> apt-get, and Ubuntu Dapper, which get's (as far as I can tell) 1.59 (it 
> may have just got to 1.61). But to really check tests, I need the latest 
> release.
>
> The difficulties are that if one tries to install the "new" libraries, 
> existing and needed applications can become unworkable. Some sort of 
> safe sandbox (chroot environment) is likely needed. But some good, sane, 
> advice would be helpful. I've had suggestions of putting up Gentoo, but 
> I've played distro-roulette enough to now be very careful about making 
> changes. I've also some critical, everyday things I must keep working.
>
> To ensure that I'm not just complaining, if someone sends me rough notes 
> and I get things working, I'll be happy to edit and prepare the HowTo 
> and to the extent my schedule allows maintain it. I use Linux, but I'm 
> prepared to try to help out on other platforms with editing a HowTo or 
> possibly running a WinXP boot that I do have available.
>
> JN  (nashjc _AT_ uottawa.ca for off-list communications)