Re: install of mc 4.6.0 from source on Debian Woody (stable)

[Russell <rjshaw iprimus com au>]

hugo vanwoerkom wrote:
> This apparently is common knowledge, but just in case
> there are others that are is ignorant as I: in order
> to install mc 4.6.0 on a Debian Woody (stable) system
> I had to resort to the following (hoping it won't
> backfire later...):
>
> Because the .deb file of mc 4.6.0 relies on a version
> of libc that is not installed on Woody, I installed
> from the tarball of mc 4.6.0
> 1. ./configure won't find libgpm until you tarball
> install gpm also in order to get libgpm.a
> 2. So download gpm from
> http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/mouse/gpm
> and configure, make and make install.
>
> The nice thing is that all this new stuff is in
> /usr/local/ where Debian does NOT install its stuff,
> so Debian can still do its tricks and you get the
> stuff from /local by merely changing the PATH env var.
>
> 3. You have to set /etc/profile with the mc -P trick
> as recorded in mc-wrapper.sh in
> /usr/local/share/mc/bin. The trick as per mc 4.5.55
> didn't work for me anymore.
>
> 4. Then you have to point gpm to the new gpm that you
> installed in /usr/local/sbin/gpm, so change the
> appropriate variable in /etc/init.d/gpm
>
> I believe this leaves Debian free to pursue its ends
> and gives me mc 4.6.0. I would rarely do this but mc
> is such a central piece of the system that it proves
> necessary, yet for me it is not worth it to change my
> Debian sources to unstable (what is that called now?
> Sarge or Slink?) which DOES have 4.6.0

You can download the unstable .deb with a browser, then
use dpkg -i. IIRC, dpkg tells you anything else it needs.