gnucash 1.7.3 beta

deane@gooroos.com deane@gooroos.com
Tue, 19 Nov 2002 01:06:34 -0800


On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 07:12:12PM -0600, Doug Graves wrote:
> I am running RHL 8.0, just downloaded 1.7.3-beta and tried to rpm it.

I'm not sure where you downloaded it from, but on the gnucash.org web-site
it is in the 'redhat-7.x' directory.  So you're on your in untested waters
trying to get it to work in RH 8.0.

> This is the result:
> 
> error: Failed dependencies:
>    g-wrap >= 1.3.2 is needed by gnucash-1.7.3-1
>    libguile.so.6 is needed by gnucash-1.7.3-1
>    libgwrap-glib.so.1 is needed by gnucash-1.7.3-1
>    libgwrap-wct.so.1 is needed by gnucash-1.7.3-1
> 
> I know I'm a really green Linux user, but I've got to ask this question: 
> Why put out an rpm that does not have all it needs for the install?

Because then it would be huge because it would need to include all of
Gnome, X Windows and probably most of Linux as well.

RPM tries to make sure that you don't install anything without all the bits
that it needs, and that you don't install anything that will break the bits
already installed.  But it's still up to you to get all the necessary bits
together.

> I looked for rpm's for each one, and found these:
> 
> 1.   g-wrap-1.1.9-1.i386.rpm
> 2.   guile-1.3.4-19.i386.rpm7
> 3.   guile-1.4-8.i386.rpm
> 
> When  I rpm #3, it tells me it's already there.

RedHat 8.0 uses guile-1.4.8 and that package provides version 9 of libguile
(i.e. libguile.so.9).  Since gnucash was built against libguile.so.6, the
package you already have installed won't work.

The real problem here is massive version inflation on dynamic libraries.
The major version number should only change if the signatures of existing
functions provided by the library have changed.  All too often, though,
library maintainers simply increment the version number with each new
release, even if it *would* have still been compatible with earlier
releases.  I don't know that this is what has happened in the case of
guile -- perhaps they had good reason to crank the version from 6 to 9 in
the space of just a few months -- but it does happen a lot when it needn't.

> When I rpm #2 it tells me there are conflicts with #3.

Yeah, that's the one you want as it supplies version 6 of libguile.

Did you try to do an upgrade (-U) or an install (-i)?

If you haven't already, you should try doing an install as it may be
possible for both versions of the library to coexist.

If that doesn't work then you are out of luck until someone gets around to
building an RPM for RH8.0.

Your alternative is to to get the source RPM for gnucash, install the
necessary development libraries (off of your RH 8.0 CDs) and rebuild
gnucash yourself.  The rebuilding part is pretty easy as it's just a single
command (rpmbuild -rebuild gnucash-1.7.3-1.src.rpm).  The tedious part is
installing all those '-devel' packages.

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