Re: What is the best way to get emacs23?

[Jonathan Groll]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 11:12:25PM -0800, rustom wrote:
> On Nov 12, 9:49 pm, Charles Sebold <cseb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12 Nov 2008, rustom wrote:
> >
> > > Giving up (on building emacs 23 on debian etch)
> >
> > > The latest error I get is
> > > configure wants glib
> > > glib wants gtk
> > > and then apt bails out saying
> >
> > > libgtk2.0-dev:
> > > Depends: libgtk2.0-0 (=2.8.20-7) but 2.10.13-2~bpo.1 is to be
> > > installed
> >
> > I am running Etch, and here's what I get when I check libgtk2.0-dev and
> > libgtk2.0-0:
> >
> > ,----
> > | $ apt-cache show libgtk2.0-dev
> > | Package: libgtk2.0-dev
> > | .
> > | . snip
> > | .
> > | Version: 2.8.20-7
> > | .
> > | . snip
> > | .
> > | Depends: libgtk2.0-0 (= 2.8.20-7), libglib2.0-dev (>= 2.8.5), libpango1.0-dev (>= 
> > 1.10.0-2), libatk1.0-dev (>= 1.6.1-2), libcairo2-dev, libx11-dev (>= 2:1.0.0-6), 
> > libxext-dev, libxinerama-dev, libxi-dev, libxrandr-dev, libxcursor-dev, libxfixes-dev, 
> > pkg-config
> > | .
> > | . snip
> > | .
> > | $ apt-cache show libgtk2.0-0
> > | Package: libgtk2.0-0
> > | .
> > | . snip
> > | .
> > | Version: 2.8.20-7
> > | Depends: libgtk2.0-common (= 2.8.20-7), libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.12.2), libc6 (>= 2.3.6-6), libcairo2 (>= 
> > 1.2.4), libfontconfig1 (>= 2.4.0), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0), libjpeg62, libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.14.8), 
> > libpng12-0 (>= 1.2.13-4), libtiff4, libx11-6, libxcursor1 (>> 1.1.2), libxext6, libxfixes3 (>= 
> > 1:4.0.1), libxi6, libxinerama1, libxrandr2, libxrender1
> > `----
> >
> > What else have you got in your /etc/apt/sources.conf?  I think that if
> > you were just using Etch packages you'd be in good shape for this.  I
> > rebuild from CVS every few days on this system, and it's Etch +
> > backports and nothing else.
>
> Yes I guess thats the problem:
> I wanted to try using conkeror ( http://conkeror.org/ ) so that I
> could use emacs(like) key bindings in a firefox like browser. Towards
> that, conkeror wanted some 'more latest' xulrunner than came with etch
> which wanted a 'more latest' libgtk (dont obviously remember the
> version numbers and am not on a linux box right now).  I got this
> libgtk from a non-standard repo which involved fudging the
> sources.list.
>
> Ironically I gave up on conkeror because I needed foxmarks and other
> such firefox plugins and I will have have to downgrade the libgtk if I
> want consistency of versions
>
> Dependency hell its called I think :-)

One way to avoid this dependancy hell is to use the netBSD pkgsrc
system (which is cross platform and even works under Linux). It will
build all needed versions of libraries automatically for you, and keep
them separated by dropping them in the /usr/pkg/ folder by default
instead of /usr. A quick change of $PATH for the user and it all runs
fine. Just last week I succesfully built emacs 23 snapshot using
pkgsrc on an ubuntu intrepid ibex system. 

However, on ibex there is a perfectly good PPA repository for emacs
23, which is what I would recommend, especially since the PPA build of
emacs-snapshot has gnome support built-in, something that I failed to
get to compile (all of the gnome dependancies) under pkgsrc.

Cheers,
Jonathan.