On Sat, 2004-10-23 at 00:33, Bart Alberti wrote: > I am on SuSE 9.0 with gs at 7.07 (my Win doze has AFPL 8.14 BTW) > it was explained here once before a while ago I think how to get > PARALLEL install of ghost script WITHOUT messing anything up. Advice, > please?
It's pretty easy when building gs from source. $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/gs831 --with-x $ make $ make so $ sudo make install $ sudo make soinstall Specifying this prefix (adjust to taste and to match the gs version you're installing) will install gs into a private directory tree. This makes it easy to remove it later without disturbing anything else. It also makes it easy to control whether or not to use it - use /usr/bin/gs for the original version, or /usr/local/gs831/bin/gs for the new version. You can also set your PATH environment variable so the version in /usr/local/gs831 is used by default. If /usr/local/gs831/bin is in the PATH before /usr/bin, the new version gets used. If it's not in PATH or listed after /usr/bin, the version in /usr/bin/ gets used. It works very well. For use with Scribus, you don't need to fiddle with the PATH - just enter the full path to the new gs in the Scribus prefs. This won't do any good if you need to use ps2pdf, however - you will want to set the PATH. Let me warn you of one easy error now - if you have /usr/bin in your PATH before /usr/local/gs831/bin and you run $ /usr/local/gs831/bin/ps2pdf input.ps you are likely to encounter all sorts of problems. This is because ps2pdf is likely to use /usr/bin/gs - an older version that doesn't understand all the same commands. Naturally, things don't work as expected. The --with-gs=NAME option /may/ cause ps2pdf to pick the right gs, but I haven't checked that - you're better off setting your PATH anyway. If you're not sure how to set the PATH environment variable, I advise you to have a look around linuxquestions.org . This query might get you started: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alinuxquestions.org%20PATH&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 There is some information on installing GhostScript on http://docs.scribus.net/ too: http://docs.scribus.net/index.php?lang=en&sm=dtptoolbox&page=toolbox7 Note that -with-x should be --with-x . I've also heard reports of some people having problems with --enable-compile-inits as shown on that page, so if you have trouble re-run configure without that option. -- Craig Ringer
