Installing Packages Issue

khoraski · 08-31-2012, 07:33 PM

The issue I'm having is pretty simple.

Basically, I'm running a version of Linux on my Wii called Whiite, which is Debian, meaning it takes the .deb packages.

One issue is that it cannot get on the internet, so I decided to download all of the packages onto a thumb drive and then put them in the Wii and install them.

The problem is not that I cannot find the packages, the problem is that every time I try to install one, I get a list of errors, each one saying "this package relies on [insert another package name here]".

So if I want to install the GCC package or the Python package, I'd have to install tons of other packages, which would take hours.

I'm wondering if there is a quicker way to do this. If I can somehow install GCC or Python without having to go through the effort of finding and installing hundreds of other packages.

Maybe there is some kind of package that would install all of those for me at once, or something like that.

It's annoying that I can't install even GCC, because that means I can barely do anything on the system but run Bash scripts.

Also, the Wii uses the PowerPC processor. Meaning, all the packages have to be PowerPC packages. Which usually PowerPC packages are not too hard to find, it's just that each one relies on like 100 other packages.

towheedm · 08-31-2012, 08:40 PM

This is called package dependency and unfortunately, if you're installed packages manually, I don't think there is any way around this.

You can use the apt-cache command to find the dependencies for any particular package. To find the dependencies for gcc-4.4:

Code:

apt-cache show gcc-4.4

Will return something like:

Code:

Package: gcc-4.4
Priority: optional
Section: devel
Installed-Size: 4572
Maintainer: Debian GCC Maintainers <debian-gcc@lists.debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 4.4.5-8
Provides: c-compiler
Depends: gcc-4.4-base (= 4.4.5-8), cpp-4.4 (= 4.4.5-8), binutils (>= 2.20.1-15~), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.4.5-8), libgomp1 (>= 4.4.5-8), libc6 (>= 2.11)
Recommends: libc6-dev (>= 2.5)
Suggests: gcc-4.4-multilib, libmudflap0-4.4-dev (>= 4.4.5-8), gcc-4.4-doc (>= 4.4.4-17), gcc-4.4-locales (>= 4.4.4-17), libgcc1-dbg, libgomp1-dbg, libmudflap0-dbg, libcloog-ppl0 (>= 0.15.9-2~), libppl-c2, libppl7
Filename: pool/main/g/gcc-4.4/gcc-4.4_4.4.5-8_i386.deb
Size: 2801952
MD5sum: 4c61e4d251d77968e40badd78fe342da
SHA1: b557a5fd513a361d88070b4fb6f1d29378e48dd1
SHA256: 79743ad9f1a27a2779f840984718f878f51f3c2f9dfdf2170067a8cd7fd227a4
Description: The GNU C compiler
 This is the GNU C compiler, a fairly portable optimizing compiler for C.
Homepage: http://gcc.gnu.org/
Tag: devel::compiler, devel::lang:c, implemented-in::c, interface::commandline, role::program, scope::utility, suite::gnu, works-with::software:source

Now look at the Depends line for a list of dependent packages. Of course these dependent package may depend on other packages, so check those also.

You can also get this from the Debian packages page at: http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages