I keep running into a brick wall (or maybe I'm the wall...) when it comes to libpng.

I upgraded to KDE3, using rpm -i to install the RPMs. Probably should have used rpm -U instead. This left me with libpng2 & libpng3 both installed on my system.

Subsequently, I had problems with applications (mysql GUI was one) which compiled with libpng2 and reported that they were running with libpng3. Consequently, none of the menubar buttons rendered.

So, I removed libpng2 and said "Yes" when rpmdrake advised it would remove a raft of packages (KDE, xcdroast, a lot of favorite games, etc.)

Then I rpm -i'd the KDE3 RPMs. Now, I get a lot of packages that won't install because they want libpng2-devel. If I try and put libpng2-devel onto the system, I get warnings of conflicts with libpng3-devel, so I quit without installing libpng2-devel.

This feels so much like a chicken-and-egg problem. How do I get around it? I'd like to install koffice and mysql GUI, but I (apparently) can't have libpng2 and libpng3 running on my system at the same time. Help!

(Can I just put some symbolic links where libpng2's files would go, pointing to the libpng3 files, and call it a day? Or does rpm look for a database entry for an "installed package list" when evaluating dependencies?...)

Thanks!

I think one of the work around this one is just symlink one into another, for instance point libng2.so to libpng3.so. This way you can keep the rpm db intact and have all your png2 dependent GUIs use png3. Try it next time, for now try to install everything with explicit call for not checking dependencies (that's the only thing that repels me about rpm's idea)

Hope you have better luck symlinking libpng files than I did!

I tried to install a prog which required libpng.so.2 but I've got 3 on my system. Symlinking didn't work and I read a thread somewhere that 3 isn't compatible with 2.

Dutch