Hi

There is plenty of info around the net on how to install software from source. Last night I when I wanted to update Transmission from version 1.75 to 1.80 I had no option but to compile from source as even the ppa wasn't giving the latest version.

As I had never done this before and didn't know how it worked I used synaptic to remove transmission first then did the compile and I now have transmission working, no problems at all.

My question now is, If a new version comes out how do I update it?

Do I just download the latest source tar ball and compile that and install it or would I need to uninstall the version 1.80 before compiling the next one? Is there a different procedure for compiling a source ball if you are updating rather than doing a first time install??

Many thanks for your help

Becker

There are several options.
The simplest way is to wait for the packagers to catch up and provide the program in synaptic. Then you just uninstall the software from source (make uninstall) and install the package from synaptic again. This is what most people do.
The 2nd simplest way is to download the newer tarball, uninstall and reinstall. This is what some people do.
The 3rd way is to use git or svn to sync with the source from the developer's repo, and use make to recompile only what have changed. This is supposedly faster than reinstalling from scratch, supposing you do it often. Very few people do it.

Thanks for your reply you answer my question totally.

I saw the option for using SVN when I built it but as I'd never heard of that before and it also mentioned building from source I took that option.

I guess now I have the feature I needed waiting for the package team to catch up and going that route would be easiest. Still it's good to have the other methods explained in case I want a program the repos don't carry at some point.

you can often find a lot of ubuntu packages if you search the ppas here. This might be the one you're looking for.

Unbelievable! I added the ppa before I decided to compile the program and the version it offered was 1.76 which was an improvement on what I had but still short of the 1.80 I needed. This ppa you've linked to has the correct v1.80 ready and waiting to be installed.

Oh well at least I learnt something in the process. :-)

Regards

Becker