[GNC] Deb 3.4.0.1 not working for me in ubuntu 18.04

[Stephen M. Butler]

On 1/9/19 3:36 AM, Geert Janssens wrote:
> Op dinsdag 8 januari 2019 22:11:29 CET schreef Colin Law:
>> On Tue, 8 Jan 2019 at 17:52, Stephen M. Butler <kg7je at arrl.net> wrote:
>>> I am trying to get a better deb via Launchpad were we can put up a ppa
>>> for folks to point to.  Probably name it "gnucash-daily", although I
>>> don't see it changing daily but as commits are made to the maint branch.
>> From my personal point of view the most useful ppa would be one that has
>> the latest released version rather than a daily or similar version.
>>
>>> However, I am having problems with one of the tools (pbuilder-dest) and
>>> have a query out in the Ubuntu Forums for input.  Nothing back when I
>>> checked a minute ago.  I suspect I'm going to have to read the code
>>> (shell script) for pbuild-dest and the debootstrap script it invokes
>>> (also shell script).  The later complains that gpgv can't be found --
>>> but I can invoke it just fine.  I am comfortable in ksh and hope that
>>> transfers well to bsh.
>>>
>>> Wish I had better news and was making progress to get something really
>>> useful.  My research indicates the check-install is not up to the task
>>> of dealing with multiple O/S version.
> Indeed. Last time I checked (which is 10+ years ago already) checkinstall 
> didn't do dependency tracking. What it does is recording everything that gets 
> installed by 'make install' and wrapping that in a .deb package (or .rpm 
> package for that matter).
>
> As far as I understand it's not really meant to prepare packages for 
> distribution, but to make your package manager aware that you have installed 
> something you built from scratch. The advantages are
> 1. your package manager is made aware of  what got installed and hence can 
> properly manage file conflicts on later system updates.
> 2. your package manager can be used to remove the package cleanly if you no 
> longer need it.
>
> Packaging for distribution is more complicated than that. Such a package needs 
> dependency information to help the package manager install the proper 
> dependencies.
>
> The best way to get there is indeed starting from the package sources of a 
> working package. I'm used to the rpm world in which a source package 
> essentially consists of a package spec file, a source tarball and optionally a 
> number of patch files. The spec file contains all the details, including 
> dependencies (with minimum versions), how to build from source and how to 
> install. These source packages can be "installed" into a development 
> environment and then adjusted before composing a final rpm file. A long time 
> ago I have created my own rpms that way:
> In the installed source package I replaced the source tarball with a more 
> recent one and then tweaked the spec file as required. This I could then be 
> compiled into a final rpm ready for distribution.
>
> I assume something similar can be done with .deb package. No doubt they also 
> have some source format you can download somewhere, update and the recompose 
> into a proper .deb file. Dmitri's work is probably a good starting point. To 
> make it more universally installable (as opposed to only for a specific ubuntu 
> release) you'd need to find a way to adjust the dependencies to declare 
> minimum versions rather than exact versions (like for libboost >= 1.54 instead 
> of libboost = 1.65). Rpm allows this and I expect the deb format to allow this 
> as well in some form or another. GnuCash' minimal dependencies are nicely 
> recorded by David Cousens in our wiki:
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Dependencies
> So that can also be useful for you.
>
> Good luck!
>
> Geert


That is also my understanding of .deb files.  I'll keep the wiki in mind
as I move forward. 

In the last 24 hours found that sbuilder is an alternative (older?) to
pbuilder and it installed/ran on my box.  So I'm switching to use that
tool.  It also has hooks for a git-buildpackage utility that will allow
direct interaction with a local git clone.  I'm hoping all I have to do
is do a git pull on the maint branch, add in the local spec files and
let sbuild do its thing.

I'm either approaching the knee or into it on the learning curve here!

-- 
Stephen M Butler, PMP, PSM
Stephen.M.Butler51 at gmail.com
kg7je at arrl.net
253-350-0166
-------------------------------------------
GnuPG Fingerprint:  8A25 9726 D439 758D D846 E5D4 282A 5477 0385 81D8