Netscape (any variety!)

["Paul Jewell" <paul jewell savanna ndirect co uk>]

Please accept my apologies if this is not close enough to being on-topic for
any of you, but I am hoping someone can help with the following problems:

1. CVS - I use the CVS server to get the latest source for the
gtk/glib/gnome/gimp source etc, and occasionally get "file xxx not (any
longer) pertinent" messages. It appears these messages relate to files which
are no longer in the repository, but cvs doesn't seem to remove them from
the local source directory. I then have problems compiling, normally due to
a directory in the source tree with no makefile. Is there any way to get cvs
to replicate the source tree exactly, apart from deleting the local source
and getting it again? (assuming this is a problem!)

2. Gimp - I have been compiling the Gimp sources without problem until
recently. When compiling I get an error message, again complaining that
there is no target in a makefile. I would quote the exact problem, but I
have another problem (see 3)!

3. Netscape. I was happily using Netscape with Slackware 3.5, when I
upgraded to glibc 6.x (needed threads for one of the Enlightenment packages
(esc?), or so it seemed). Seemed like a good idea at the time, but what
followed was many weeks tracking down the source for many of the programs I
was using, and re-compiling. This may be due to ignorance on my part about
shared libraries, but problems seemed to occur when I used a program which
was compiled with for example libc 5.x, but dynamically linked to another
library which relied on glibc 6.x. I did try to create symbolic links, but
was unsuccessful in my attempts to get it all working. I now have all the
various programs running, and my system appears to be stable running
2.2.0-pre1, with egcs 1.1.1, libc6, and xfree86 3.3.3. I am not in a hurry
to re-install Slackware 3.5 (I would probably become suicidal if the disk
went down on me :-)!) but as yet I haven't resolved the web browser problem.
I downloaded the 4.50 version of Netscape, compiled for glibc, only to find
it requires libg++.2.7.2, which I don't have, and have been unable to
compile successfully. None of the other binary releases seem to meet my
requirements. I cannot find the source any where on the Netscape website, so
I tried Mozilla, without success. I did get it to compile, but it never
appeared to be doing anything reasonable when I ran it. Understanding 12Meg
of source code is probably more than I want to do in this lifetime - no,
that sounds too negative - probably more than I have time for! Is anyone
able to give me some hints on how I can get Netscape running with my system?
Perhaps I have missed the subtleties of managing dynamic libraries, or
perhaps someone knows where the source code can be found (if available).
Alternatively, can someone recommend a different package for browsing the
web, and for managing email through a pop account. I am not averse to the
likes of elm, as I spend many years using it on an Amiga (with a uucp link
rather than pop3).

Again, I apologise if much of the above is not directly gtk related, but I
hope that someone among the many who receive this newsgroup is able to help
me get the above issues resolved, so I can then embark on learning gtk
programming and doing something useful with it! Hopefully I will then be in
a position of being an information provider, rather than being only a user!

Many thanks,
Paul Jewell