It was a fairly minimal installation I admit, on an old laptop, I only selected A,AP,D,E,K,L,N and X (running twm).

On starting emacs however I am told:
emacs:*error*while*loading*shared*libraries:*libMagickWand.so.5

which I assume means I am missing imagemagick as a dependency...but surely if I selected package group E: GNU Emacs then this should have been provided during the installation process?

Nope. Slackware doesn't manage dependencies, and don't call me Shirley.

I realise that Slackware doesn't do dependencies but I'm not actually installing Emacs I'm installing Slackware and as a part of that installation process it offers to install GNU Emacs for me, but doesn't. I think it's a quirk of the installer that needs addressing.

If Emacs is offered then a working Emacs should be installed. If I choose not to install package group E and then subsequently decide to install Emacs post-install then obviously fair enough I am then on my own as regards resolving any dependencies. But the installer should install what it says it is going to install.

It does. The installer installs everything you tell it to install....but not dependencies of this packages..

[QUOTE=rkfb;4921045]I realise that Slackware doesn't do dependencies but I'm not actually installing Emacs

You didn't want to install Emacs? then what's the problem?

It's recommended to go with full install unless you know what you are doing and how to solve dependecy problems

[QUOTE=frankohfrank;4921058]You cut off my sentence, I was installing slackware and included emacs as part of that installation.

Package-sets are not analogous to the meta-packages you get in other distros. They're really only useful as an aid to make it easy to exclude various components. Installing a package-set in and of itself isn't enough to ensure that all its required dependencies will be met and what it contains will run.


Having said that I've felt for a while now that the package-sets need reorganising, so I have some sympathy for your argument.

Personally, I'd be in favour of removing from the setup dialog the ability to choose individual packages all together (there are just far too many of them now for it to be a practical option anyway) and instead just present a list of additional sets that may be added to a base install.
- Do you want to add X11 to the install (Y/N)?
- Do you want to add KDE to the install (Y/N)
... and so on.

Anyone who wants more fine grained control than this should be left to create and use tagfiles.


We get a lot of posts on here from people having difficulties because they haven't installed some vital package or other. An approach such as that above would reduce these issues significantly.

Just my tuppence worth.

I am quite comfortable running Slackware and also with resolving dependencies. As in this case I've downloaded and installed the imagemagick library from xap and it's fine, emacs is up and running.

I just think that if the selection of packages offers me E: GNU Emacs by then selecting that package group I would expect to have a working Emacs installed when I first login. If this is not the case because imagemagick is also required but not included then there should either not be a package group E in the first place or imagemagick should be a part of that group.

I see what you're saying then. When I started using Slackware, I usually just resolved this kind of problem by doing the full installation and then removepkg packages that I thought I didn't need and then check if that broke anything, etc.. I think this goes with the philosophy of self-management and control over packages.. A simpler solution might be to just note the dependencies somewhere in the same directory, in the slackbuild script or something like that..

That would cause a duplicate in all areas
take an example of library. They are often used by many applications at once but they are placed under l/ and if you don't install libraries during installation, it's not slackware's fault.

As previously mentioned, package-sets are not meta-package as they don't have any dependency information listed
It's guaranteed that you will not have any problem with full install, but other that that, it's your own choice

I did install l/ but the library I needed is in xap/ and that wasn't selected. I am talking solely about e/ here which offers GNU Emacs but is missing that one library to complete a working install of Emacs. I do see that as slackware's fault. It should either install it or not offer it. Or the library should be included in e/.

deleted:. fskmh said it better below.

The classification as an app or a library is a legacy of the days when Slackware disk sets spanned one or a few stiffy disks. Because ImageMagick is a suite of apps (convert, display etc.) while also containing libraries that a fair number of apps require, I suppose you could argue that it should be split into imagemagick and imagemagick-solibs, but I don't see Pat going for that one because the Slackware-HOWTO encourages "a full installation for best results", not just everything in "disk set" L.

The fact that Slackware doesn't nag you to clean your room is either a blessing or a curse. The only thing left is to decide which one of those it is for you.

1 members found this post helpful.

Like other people tried to explain you above, the package series are not meant to be used to select only some to have a reduced install: Slackware is meant to be used as a full install and support is offered only if installed in this form, with no dependency resolution.

If you feel like to install just a subset of the packages that Slackware offers it's up to you only to manage dependencies for what you decide to install to have a working system, so it doesn't matter in which of the various series packages are.

I know this is hard to understand and accept for people coming from other distributions where dependency resolution is taken care for you, but this is how it is and if you look around in this forum, you will see this has been discussed countless times.

I personally prefer it this way, so I can decide myself what depends on whatever else, without a package manager that installs for me, for example, avahi that I will never use.

On the specific thing of imagemagick/emacs, I too agree with what fskmh has written.

1 members found this post helpful.