Dealing with software with boat/train/truckloads of dependencies
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Dealing with software with boat/train/truckloads of dependencies
I'm a very long Slacker here, but I've never tried to install something with so many dependencies that don't come with Slackware before. I know this is most common with multimedia, but comes up elsewhere, such as my particular case with some software-defined radio...software. One particular software package has so many dependencies that someone made a self-contained distro (based on Knoppix or something, I think) similar to what they did with MythTV, etc.
But, as a general question, how do you deal with building these kinds of monsters? For Pat and the gang, I'm sure they have scripts to deal with pulling in everything they package, but what if it's something that even Slackbuilds doesn't have entries for? The thought of having to spend DAYS (depending on how much time each day I can dedicate) just to run one software package is just not much fun, and why I gave up the first time on it, at least on Slackware.
I'm sure there must be some tips and tricks to this that I'm just clueless about. If not...?
There's already several threads on this discussion.
Me personally? I cheat and look at the required packages list from other distributions.
If it's very very new (that is, other distributions don't have it either), then the package creator for those distributions as well as myself are in the same boat.
I had fun building Enlightenment a few months back.
Sure, it's a hard slog, but you get there in the end. Not like
trying to install GNOME when it first came out. Hours/days to download on a dialup modem, and the same again trying to compile the damn thing.
Buildaholics Anonymous. "Hi, my name is Niki, and I'm a buildaholic. It all started rather innocently about ten years ago, using configure && make && checkinstall on a handful of multimedia packages. Then I learnt how to manage and even write my own SlackBuild scripts. Slowly things got out of hand, when I wrote SlackBuild scripts for a minimal GNOME desktop back in 2006. Today I have my own dedicated build machine supporting several Slackware versions and architectures, totalling more than 700 packages, and my girlfriend says I'm a hopeless case."
Buildaholics Anonymous. "Hi, my name is Niki, and I'm a buildaholic. It all started rather innocently about ten years ago, using configure && make && checkinstall on a handful of multimedia packages. Then I learnt how to manage and even write my own SlackBuild scripts. Slowly things got out of hand, when I wrote SlackBuild scripts for a minimal GNOME desktop back in 2006. Today I have my own dedicated build machine supporting several Slackware versions and architectures, totalling more than 700 packages, and my girlfriend says I'm a hopeless case."
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