[Slackbuilds-users] Thanks!

[Rich Shepard]

On Sat, 24 Feb 2007, Robby Workman wrote:

> FWIW, I'm sure Rich would greatly appreciate it if you would work out all
> the kinks in building gnucash :) That's one we'd like to have around here
> anyway...

Nikki, Rob, et al.:

   Allow me to both apologize and elaborate based on what I've learned so far
in this highly frustrating, time consuming exercise.

   The apology is for being so close to my problem of getting just the right
Gnome packages installed in order to successfully build Gnucash that I lost
sight of the difference between preparing a package (using a SlackBuild
script) and installing it (where the requisite dependencies should be
resolved). They are two separate activities and I wasted folks time with it.

   What I've learned so far are important to make life easier for me and
everyone else who wants to use Gnucash on Slackware in the future. First, we
(in the generic sense) need to maintain a current list of Gnome-ish
requirements, including specific versions, and make it abundantly clear to
those who want to install a Gnucash .tgz that thees dependencies must be
resolved first. Perhaps the inclusion of a slapt-get script with the package
distribution would work. (I've lightly used slapt-get, never used swaret.)

   Search for gnucash on slackware with Google and there are a lot of
references to installing all of Freerock, Dropline, or Gware gnome. Heck,
the gnucash README.dependencies suggest that in the Slackware 10.2 and
earlier section. Well, having gone through the prerequisites, I now have a
list of 21 installed packages (some are mine, a few from Dropline, a couple
from Freerock). There are some others that were already installed here (such
as gnome-icon-themes) so I'm sure the list should be longer, but if a
configure didn't barf, it was because the dependent library was here so I am
unaware of it.

   There's an issue with the installation sequence of guile, g-wrap, and
slib. Two Gnucash developers told me that was the sequence earlier this past
week; yesterday, Derek wrote that it should be guile->slib->g-wrap. There
are also very specific requirements for versions; apparently the latest ones
just don't work with gnucash. In all, there's a lot of confusion about this.
And, for my own selfish needs and future sanity I need to resolve that
confusion and make order and understanding from it. I'll share that with the
community, of course. Judah Milgram wants the information for his web site,
and Serge from Dropline discovered that I had written the gnucash wiki page
on installing on slackware; I had completely forgotten about that.

   Derek Atkins of Gnucash also wrote that the requirement for g-wrap will be
dropped from the next release. That'll help. They'd also like to have it
more readily available for Slackware, so there is a common goal here. With
the working SlackBuild scripts from Gnome SlackBuild (the frg packagers),
and guidance from you folks here, I suppose that I should assume the role of
gnucash-on-slackware glue that holds it together. I'll give it a shot.

   Toward that end, I've attached the gnucash.SlackBuild that's based on what
Jay used for his linuxpackages.net contributions, modified by me from
another, working script. Although I've read the docs from this site, I'm
brand new at this and am certain that the script could be greatly improved.
Please make changes or recommendations.

   Some time this weekend, among the business stuff I _must_ get done, I'll
try to finish installing gnucash here. Then I'll write it all up and pass it
around (to the gnucash developers as well as the slackware community) for
comments. Then everyone can have a copy to use as apporpriate.

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |    The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.        |          Accelerator(TM)
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