Re: [Pan-users] Pan not in Mint Debian repository

[Duncan]

dos4ever posted on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 06:45:43 -0700 as excerpted:

> Hello I am a long time user of Pan and recently installed Mint Debian
> LMDE 201204.
> I could not find Pan in the repository, I tried a Pan Deb package I
> found but it would not install as a lack of dependency file when I tried
> to install that file, I had a newer one already on the OS and it would
> not work with the Deb file. I then tried to install from source code and
> after ./configure; make resulted in an error message about Glib.....
> XPN *IS* in the repository but I prefer Pan,,,,can you help with a set
> of script that will install Pan from source??? Anyway you could persuade
> Mint Debian to include Pan in the repository?

Set of scripts to install pan from source?  Sounds like what gentoo does 
in its normal configuration!  (Yeah, I'm a gentooer. =:^)

1) Without a copy of the error message it's hard to say what's going on, 
tho I can guess (see #2).  So please post it next time if possible.


2) I'm not a debianite, but the following applies to most binary distros 
(including debian-based distros I'm told), as it did on mandrake nearly a 
decade ago now, before I switched to gentoo:

Most binary distros split libraries (as shipped by upstream) into two 
parts, a runtime library (glib in this case), and the -dev (or -devel) 
package (glib-dev or glib-devel), which isn't needed if all you're 
installing is binary packages (thus the split), but *IS* needed if you're 
trying to build packages depending on that library from source.  These 
contain the header files, *.pc files, and other content needed for 
building against the library that's not normally needed just to run a 
program pre-built against it.

Thus, to build anything from source on a binary distro, you normally have 
to install the -dev(el) packages for several dependencies.  Once you 
figure out what's going on, it's not too difficult, but you will often 
have several to install, and if you try to do it by building and 
installing the packages as they come up as errors, you'll find yourself 
stuck in a loop, installing one at a time.

One of the easiest ways around this where an older package exists for 
your distro (tho that unfortunately doesn't seem to apply in your case) 
is to rebuild the older version from sources using your package manager's 
commands to do so.  This will pull in all the necessary -dev packages for 
the older version, and tho you might need to upgrade a couple of them 
(depending on just how old it is) and a few dependencies may be added/
subtracted in the newer version, it's still far easier to do that and get 
most everything installed all at once, then to try to do the build, fail, 
figure out what they error wants and install it, then loop over the 
process again for the next one, one at a time.


You could try that with the debian package too, tho I'm not absolutely 
sure how it'll work.  If it doesn't work, the pan website
( http://pan.rebelbase.com ) has a list of the requirements, and I 
believe there's a list in the sources tarball as well.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman