Re: [PLUG] Perils of building from source?

["Jason Stelzer" <jason.stelzer@gmail.com>]

I just want to follow up Sean's  advice with a note that I have used
apt-build to manage tweaked builds of packages. It's convenient for
when a package you want is bundled without a feature you need.

it will build the packages from source, optimized/configured as you
need and create packages for them in a local repository.

On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 2:18 PM, sean finney <seanius@seanius.net> wrote:
> hiya,
>
> On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 12:01:14PM -0500, Eric wrote:
>> While I agree with you in general this *may* be a specific case where
>> compiling from source can help.  The current binary is from July of '08
>> and the OS is Ubuntu 8.10.  I suspect there may be some subtle library
>> changes that compiling from source *may* help.  If not: Oh Well I Tried :-D
>
> yeah, sometimes the libraries that the package in question uses changes in
> a way where the abi is subtly broken and it's not detected by the developer
> or any of the automated tools.  sometimes just recompiling against all the
> same libraries on your current system will magically fix it in that case.
>
>> The thing that annoys me in the compile-from-source option is that I
>> don't know until I start what libraries and headers I need.  I compile
>
> apt-get build-dep <pkg> is a good starting point (after adding the relevant
> deb-src lines for your distro/release).
>
>> until there is an error, try to figure out what's missing that caused
>> the error and install that, then re-try.  It's similar to diagnosing
>> medical conditions like Dr. House :-)
>
> if you do the above it will get you quite far.  you can also then look in
> debian/rules in the existing source package, which will usually have the
> configure/make options buried somewhere in it.
>
> a few other things that might prove useful (though i don't know how useful
> for your situation, i'll just blurt them all out for shits and giggles)
>
> - apt-get source -b <pkg> will download and recompile the source package
>  in question into a new .deb.  in the case of subtle library changes this
>  is often an easy way out.
>
> - depending on the quality of the package, local patches, and other changes,
>  you can sometimes get away with doing a cp -a on the debian directory from
>  the source package into a newer/unpackaged version of the source code,
>  creating a fake changelog entry in debian/changelog, and then rebuilding
>  with dpkg-buildpackage
>
> - if you build the code entirely from source, you should consider installing it
>  somewhere that will not conflict with the pkg management system, ideally
>  somewhere that you could easily uninstall it later.  i prefer using stow, or
>  a --prefix that's otherwise unique and open to an rm -rf later.
>
> - if you build the code entirely from source but other packages depend on
>  one of the binary packages, you can create a "fake package" with equivs.
>
>
> hth,
>        sean
>
>
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-- 
J.
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