Building GnuCash deb package from svn trunk for Ubuntu 10.04

Rob Hills rhills at medimorphosis.com.au
Sat Jul 10 10:53:03 EDT 2010


Hi,

Not sure what happened to the origial post, the content was all there in the copy in my Sent Mail box.  Anyway, sorry for the 
noise - we'll try again...

Wasn't sure whether to post this on a GnuCash list or a Ubuntu one but thought I'd stand a better chance of sorting my problem 
out here.

I've been able to check out the source for GnuCash 2.3.14 from the svn repository and build it, creating a binary that starts up 
without any problems.  However, when I create a deb package and use that to update my GnuCash installation (from version 
2.2.9-5 that comes with Ubuntu Lucid) using apt-get (or Synaptic) the process completes without any error, but the installed 
binaries disappear and I can no longer run GnuCash.

I use the following steps to build my package, which I've cobbled together from a number of sources (mainly 
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Building#Ubuntu_10.04_LTS_.28Lucid_Lynx.29 + other parts of that page):

mkdir -p ~/packages/unstable ~/packages/development
rm -rf ~/packages/unstable/gnucash ~/packages/development/gnucash
cd ~/packages/development
svn co http://svn.gnucash.org/repo/gnucash/trunk gnucash
cd gnucash
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$HOME/packages/unstable/gnucash --enable-debug --enable-doxygen --enable-error-on-warning ~ 
   --enable-compile-warnings --enable-dbi --enable-webkit
sudo checkinstall -D --default --install=no --pkgversion 2.3.14
sudo chown root:root gnucash_2.3.14-1_amd64.deb
sudo mv gnucash_2.3.14-1_amd64.deb /usr/local/local-deb-packages/
sudo ~/bin/update-local-deb-packages
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade gnucash

These steps seem to complete without an error and produce v2.3.14 binaries in ~/packages/unstable/gnucash/bin.  However, 
after I've upgraded using apt-get, my previously-installed v2.2.9-5 binaries have disappeared without being replaced by the 
newer ones.

I have a moderate amount of experience with Linux and I am a Java software developer so I have some relevant skills, but I'm 
out of my depth here.  Any tips would be welcome.

Cheers,
Rob Hills
Waikiki, Western Australia
  


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