Hello. I'm far from a linux noob (c-programmer, physicist, haven't owned a Windoze box since 1995) but not an expert either- I mainly just use it. Trying out Slackware from a 64-bit liveusb system with persistence and I'm stumped.

I need xournal (or another pdf editor) for work. No Slackpkg seems to be available but there is a SlackBuild. I happily download SlackBuild and follow instructions (download source tarball, chmod +x xournal.SlackBuild, etc.) I run xournal.SlackBuild. The configure process starts, but quits saying "No Package 'libgnomecanvas-2.0' found".

No problem, turns out this is available using slapt-get from slacky repo. I install libgnomecanvas using slapt-get, it goes into /usr/lib. Re-run xournal.SlackBuild- same failure.

I look thru xournal.SlackBuild, notice LIBDIRSUFFIX=64, which means it is looking for libraries in /usr/lib64 instead of /usr/lib. No problem, I create a symlink in /usr/lib64: ln -s /usr/lib/libgnomecanvas-2.so.0.3000.3 /usr/lib64/libgnomecanvas-2.so.

Run xournal.SlackBuild again- same failure.

What am I missing here?

Thanks for any suggestions.

It could be because one/some of the dependencies of libgnomecanvas are missing. If you do ldd /usr/lib/libgnomecanvas-2.so.0.3000.3 you can see what libraries it needs and see which say Not Found.

Also make sure you have the 64 bit libraries installed if you are building on a 64 bit system. It sounds like the libgnomecanvas package you installed is the 32 bit one which won't work with 64 bit.

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Thanks for this, af. In fact I finally got xournal installed and working by removing libgnomecanvas using slapt-get remove (since I installed it with slapt-get). Then downloaded and installed sbotools and installed xournal with sboinstall. This "just worked".
No idea (and no hint from slapt-get) as to whether the other dependencies were still un-met with slapt-get install.

I am also going to be investigating slacrepo and slpkg. Looks like slpkg is under current development whereas slacrepo is dormant (stable?) since mid 2015.

I'm looking for a stable system without systemd that I can use on my laptop and desktop machines for the kind of heavy scientific computing (and heavy scientific email!) that I have to do every day. Before installng for real, my next step is to try out installing Mathematica (the most amazing program I have ever encountered in 47 years of computing!) and the Geant4 particle simulation toolkit.

Wish me luck.

What was likely the problem is missing or screwed up dependencies. For any SlackBuild on slackbuilds.org (SBo), they are required to have all dependencies available. If you browse the site, it will list any required packages at the bottom of the README section. For xournal, you only need libgnomecanvas since libgnomecanvas has no dependencies itself.

In regards to slapt-get, if things were placed in /usr/lib/ instead of /usr/lib64/, you might have slapt-get configured to a 32bit mirror/repo instead of a 64bit one. That could lead to xournal not recognizing the dependency since it's for the wrong system. sbotools went through and built libgnomecanvas and installed it, then it built xournal and installed that. It should work its way through dependencies for you. Be careful about installing packages from multiple repositories as they aren't guaranteed to work with each other (they could've been compiled differently or relying on different dependencies that might even been different versions).

So far, I only have experience with sbopkg (requires a bit of extra work for dependencies using the included sqg) and slackrepo. The creator of slackrepo (David Spencer, aka 55020) is very active on this forum and is one of the admins at SBo. He recently created dusk, which automates building newer kernels when they're released by kernel.org and providing Slackware packages to us (if you want to trust him, but he also provides scripts so you can do it yourself). slackrepo is fully functional. I know he still has plans on his todo list, but it

However, with slackrepo, keep in mind that it is designed to be run on a clean install. When it builds a program, it will create an overlayfs and then chroot to it so it doesn't modify your system at all. Once the program is compiled, the chroot is destroyed and your system remains clean. Because of this, you shouldn't use slackrepo on your primary machine as you'll obviously want to install the programs you compile. You'd either need a dedicated machine or a VM (I use a VM because I don't have an extra machine that can stay clean). Because of the design, slackrepo is not for everyone. It is better suited to people who have Slackware on at least 2 or more computers, because then you can have your slackrepo machine create, well, a repo that both machines can connect to and download and install packages.

For managing a single computer, it would probably better to stick to one of the other tools... sbopkg, sbotools, slpkg, etc. Feel free to install all of them and try them out to see which one you like the best.

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