upgrading to 13.1
 

Hi,

I know this type of upgrade question is asked regularly so I apologise in advance if its annoying.

Im currently running 12.2, and Im wondering when 13.1 may be available? have there been many problems with 13.0? I've been working quite alot so havent been checking in that often lately.

also, would my old .tgz packages work with 13.1, or would I need to rebuild them as .txz?

sorry in advance from me too for the super-quick answers:

- there's no release schedule: it will be released when Patrick Volderding will think it's ready.

- your old packages will work also on the new slackware.

super, thankyou :)

ah, sorry, I reread my answer and your question, I was thinking you were speaking about the package format: it's not sure that your old packages will work on the new slackware.
It depends on which libraries they are built on: if, for instance, they are built on an older version of libpng than 1.4 (the one in -current), thay will probably not work. same thing for libjpeg (it has been upgraded in -current) and so on.
you have to check if their dependencies are updated from slackware-12.2 and slackware-current and than consider rebuilding/updating/patching the packages (but you can still use the .tgz format instead of .txz for creating packages).
but if you just need prebuilt packages or build scripts for -current/future-13.1 there is a lot of -maintained- stuff around.

Thats far from true for 99% of packages.
Yes you can still use .tgz as the file extension but since most libraries will have been updated in next Slackware release, furthermore from 12.2, you will have to rerbuild them in order for them to work.

edit: ponce added another answer in the meantime..

yes, sorry for misunderstanding at first...

I see, thanks for the clarification ponce and sahko, I did actually ask simply about the .tgz format working on the .txz system, I didnt think at all about the libraries, I just assumed everything would be backward compatable.

having said that its not too much of a problem to build the programs again, most are from slackbuilds (thanks slackbuilds.org). I have a few programs that I have to build myself, but I made notes on them the first time I built them, so thats not a problem. also I have made it my preference to choose gtk2 apps over qt or programs that require 5+ dependancies simply for the sake of eye candy so it shouldnt be too bad.


another question I would like to ask is this:

is building a .txz package yourself (when theres no slackbuild available), still the same procedure as with .tgz package building? is it just the compression thats different?

(I use this procedure from Linuxpackages.net:

http://www.linuxpackages.net/howto.p...=Package+Howto)

the procedure and the command switches for makepkg are the same, simply change the name of the output package so it ends with .txz instead of .tgz: makepkg should spot the extension and compress it differently.

FYI, have a look also at slackbuilds.org's templates: it's all well commented ;)

I did take a look at creating my own slackbuild template files a while ago, but I got lost somewhere and gave up, but that template file from slackbuilds.org looks pretty easy to understand, and I do have a couple of programs like Transmission that are updated almost weekly, but that I dont update simply because it would require my building the package manually everytime. I think I'll have another go at slackbuild templates, before I reinstall slack tomorrow.

just one final question:

Can you tell me where the file is that lists installed non-system packages? (the packages I've built from slackbuilds.org, and those that I have built and installed through pkgtool).

There exists a file for every package in the directory /var/log/packages . SlackBuilds contain a 'tag' of _SBo, unless you tell it otherwise:

And of course this would get you the original system packages:

thanks :)

The trouble with this is : as possibly not all custom built packages will follow this naming convention. A way out it to use the "hidden" functionality in slackpkg. First you need to enable a correct mirror in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors the run :to create the file non_standard.txt which will contain the names off any packages not in the standard Slackware package tree.

Using

you can identify all non-standard packages currently listed in /var/log/packages/. Slackpkg will then prompt you to remove them all -- if of course you want them removed.

If you don't want them removed, then don't remove them!