[plug] Evolution from source

James Devenish devenish at guild.uwa.edu.au
Mon Dec 8 12:27:12 WST 2003


In message <20031208040136.GA1096 at erdos.home>
on Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 12:01:36PM +0800, Cameron Patrick wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 02:00:40PM +1100, Onno Benschop wrote:
> | All I want is to know how I can:
> |       * find the official source for Evolution v1.4.5
[...]
> | Why is this so hard?

Because Ximian wishes to make it hard?

> |       * compile and install it in such a way that it won't break my
> |         Debian box
> |       * have it installed in such a way that I can uninstall it when the
> |         Debian package comes along.
[...]
> | Why is this so hard?

You could just try downloading the tarball (e.g. using `apt-get source`
as per Cameron's suggestion) and ./configure it with something like
--prefix=/usr/local/stow/evolution-1.4.5, so that it installs in a
self-contained manner. The downside is that it might not integrate into
your desktop with all the bells and whistles, and won't contain
Debian-specific style patches, but that's probably not a concern if
you're going to be able to get a proper packaged version in the near
future. I couldn't guarantee it'd work, but it is sometimes the simplest
way to make it work. If you're lucky, this will also be automatically
flexible about its dependencies. On the other hand, it might not, and
you would be better off doing what Cameron suggested. If so, you might
like to try commenting out the 'Build-Depends' and 'Depends' lines in
the debian/control file and seeing if the build still succeeds (i.e.
don't worry about backporting its dependencies). As with the --prefix
suggestion, it probably won't be feature-complete, but that might be
okay for you. Or not.

Just the usual "neatness vs. effort" tradeoff.






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