Re: Installing latest gtk+

[Michael L Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>]

On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 20:19 +1100, Andrew Dunkin wrote:
> I tried to install Adobe reader with following result;
> 
> [user myplace user]$ rpm -ivh AdobeReader_enu-7.0.8-1.i386.rpm
> error: Failed dependencies:
> gtk2 >= 2.4.0 is needed by AdobeReader_enu-7.0.8-1
> 
> I searched the available packages on my Mandrake 10 system.
> Packages containing gtk2 in their name were numerous.
> The Web is full of variations of gtk+2, which gtk+2 application do I
> need?

You must stick to packages that are specifically for your distro and
version.

Unfortunately installing the latest version of GTK from source will not
solve this problem either.  Compiling GTK from source will cause you
problems.  If you insist on compiling from source you must know what
you're doing and be able to deal with conflicts that inevitably will
arise between the system-install libraries in /usr/lib and the libraries
you compile yourself in /usr/local/lib.  And like I say, even if you try
to do this, this won't help the AdobeReader rpm because a program
compiled from source will not tell the rpm database about itself and
thus rpm will still complain.

> 
> I THINK I need GTK+2.10.6 as per the following;
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2006-October/msg00003.html
> 
> The instructions for installation were at;
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/gtk-building.html
> 
> I have 2 chances of making this work, neither are good.
> Does anyone know where I can get an rpm file or a know of simpler way of
> getting gtk+2.0 installed?

Probably a better place to ask about this is on the Mandriva mailing
lists.  Given that your distribution is now old, your best bet is likely
to simply upgrade to the latest version of Mandriva.  I once compiled
the latest gtk libraries as RPMS for my FC3 box, and that worked, but I
had a lot of dependency issues (had to rebuild more than just the gtk
rpms).  It's quite a pain.  

> Apparently I also have to be careful not to erase gtk+1.x as other
> applications on my system may need it.

You don't need to worry about that as gtk+1 is packaged separately and
the library files can coexist nicely.

> I guess I have to alter path settings as well???

One option is to install GTK2 2.10 to a special prefix.  For example
(don't forget to set PKG_CONFIG_PATH to /opt/gtk2/lib/pkgconfig after
the first module is compiled and installed):

 ./configure --prefix=/opt/gtk2

Then after building all the requisite parts of gtk2, you can write a
script to lauch Adobe Reader (installed from tarball and not rpm to
avoid the rpm complaint about gtk) by setting the following variable:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/gtk2/lib

and then running the real binary.

> Is there an installation tutorial out there somewhere for newbies?

The generic instructions (which you mentioned) for building from source
are pretty good.  However they cannot take into account distribution
specific issues.  But as I mentioned before it is just simply not
recommended, especially on a binary package system that supplies system
versions of the GTK libraries.  Problems caused by doing so are the
cause of a lot of pain and frustration on the list, both on the part of
the people trying to compile, and on the part of the developers and
people giving the help.  

If you are willing to take risks, here is how you can replace the system
libraries with ones compiled from source.  Just use  "--prefix=/usr" as
the configure option for each of the gtk packages.  Then you'll have to
either install Adobe using the tarball or force the rpm.  Be warned that
things may break that are expecting the older version of gtk2.

> 
> Installing the latest Adobe reader is becoming bigger than Ben Hur!

As long as the basic requirement is met (a binary rpm of gtk2 >= 2.4 is
installed), it is fairly straightforward.  And if Adobe chose to do so,
they could package Adobe Reader such that it provided its own gtk2
libraries like vmware does.  Unfortunately Adobe doesn't really
understand linux all that well.

Michael



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