On Tuesday 19 February 2008 11:38 am, Paul Johnson wrote: > My recollection is that Mandriva is an RPM based system that > branched out of Mandrake, which began as a simple re-packaging > of RedHat linux with "optimized" packages for i586 and i686. I > see nothing in their pages to make me think I'm wrong. Ignore > the complaining about the build system, lets just find out what > Mandriva has, and if it doesn't have the right thing, lets > build RPMS for those things too.
I'm a Mandriva user and have been since it was Mandrake in 2002 when I migrated to Linux. I don't know if I'm using the same release as Steve. Mandriva automatically keeps, when you update the distribution, whatever you need for what you're currently running. So if you need an older version of something like QT, it holds onto that if there is anything on your system still using it. The way I learned to get around having both the older and newer versions of the same software (because of course if there is something still using the older version, I don't want to break that either) is to install the newer version and make a note of where it is. Mandriva will put it in a different path, i.e., QT3 goes in a path marked QT3 (probably the full release name) and QT4 will go in a path marked QT4. If the software I want to compile from source doesn't find the right path on its own, I look in the configure file to see where it is looking (assuming it doesn't automatically ask when it can't find something, which some software does). Usually a symbolic link is sufficient. As a precaution, I make a backup of the software I'm going to upgrade so that I can get back to it in case something goes wrong and to be sure I'm keeping my configurations. I then remove the older software, e.g., LyX, completely from the system before I compile the latest version. It is particularly important to remove the current installed version, if it was installed from an rpm. Mandriva does some things unique to its distributions (which I believe is true of all distros) and the rpms reflect that -- so when compiling an upgrade from source, that stuff has to be removed to be sure everything compiles correctly. Once the later version is compiled and running, I check to see if the new profile file looks like the old one and then add back my customizations, depending on what I find. The only other issue I'm aware of I believe someone already mentioned. You have to make sure that the devel- files are the same as the regular ones; just as some software that requires kernel-headers to install from source, the kernel-headers have to the same as the current kernel. But I believe that's true of all distributions. Sorry for the nontechnical language, but I'm just an end user. HTH, deedee -- Registered Linux User #327485 Personal site, http://www.dianahkirk.com The Writer's Place, http://www.thewritersplace.com The Write Stop, http://www.writestop.com WordStar Users Group, http://www.wordstar2.com
