[Gllug] Installing Linux software (Part II)

[Ian Northeast]

James.Rocks at equant.com wrote:
> 
> OK,
> 
> So there I was getting dead confused and I thought "I know ... I'll test it
> on something simple!"
> 
> So I downloaded an application called "abiword" (part of Gnome Office) as
> an rpm and clicked it. When it opened I ckicked "install" and I get a
> dependency issue. I ran it again from a terminal session using "rpm -Uvh
> abiword-0.9.5-16.rpm" and I am relieved to see that I get the same three
> dependecies indicating (to me) that both GUI & command line versions of rpm
> see things the same. The dependencies are:
> 
> error: failed dependencies:
>         libgal.so.18 is needed by abiword-0.9.5-16
>         libgnomeprint.so.15 is needed by abiword-0.9.5-16
>         libltdl.so.3 is needed by abiword-0.9.5-16
> 
> I go off to www.rpmfind.net and I enter "gal.so.18" as my search, download
> the indicated GNOME Application Support Libraries (gal-0.18.1-1i386.rpm)
> and rerun the CL "rpm -Uvh abiword-0.9.5-16.rpm" ... same dependency
> errors. I try another of the indicated libraries and the same ... HELP!!!!!
> 
> I was beginning to think it was all crystal clear ... does anyone else
> depair when it comes to installations or is it just me?

I gave up installing things with RPM some time ago. I build packages
from source (and read the instructions:).

Someone mentioned the BSD ports (or packages, it depends on BSD flavour)
system recently. This is IMO the best way to manage software
installation. It builds the software from source *and* automatically
resolves dependencies. It hasn't failed me yet.

Both Free and NetBSD (not sure about Open) have an Abiword port/package,
although I admit I havn't tried them. I did try Abiword on Linux a while
back (built from source on RH5.2) and I wasn't very taken with it. 

Regards, Ian

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