Hullo All,
I have searching high and low for a binary package of Gimp-2.4.2, for FC6, but the latest version I can find is 2.2. Is here a reason for this?
I realise that the source is available, but would much prefer to use a package manager.
Perhaps I haven't been searching properly.
Any help welcome.

Cheers,

Are you attached to the internet.
Why not yum the packages?
I'm not sure of the exact syntax (I'm on my Mac now) but it could be:
#yum install gimp
That's how I got it. You might have to man yum for syntax.
Look at duke.edu for yum tutorials.

You can't assume that every distro will include the latest version of apps in their repositories. Some are quite current---others not.

You also can't assume that anything but latest version of the distro will have the latest versions of apps.

Data point: On PCLOS 2007, the latest version of gimp is 2.4.2


PS: Have you tried "reload" (or equivalent) to refresh your local package list?

Thanks for the replies.
Yes, have used yum to seek out the available gimp package, and it is 2.2, so not much use asking yum to update if there isn't a later version available.
I have also googled for gimp rpms and it seems that 2.4.2 is only available for F8.
I understand that the latest versions are usually only distributed in the latest distros, but I would have thought that there was some effort going on to make new versions of packages available for others. That certainly used to happen with Fedora 'extras', but they seem to have disappeared since F7.
What are the likely consequences of attempting a 'local install' of gimp-2.4.2-f8 to FC6? Will there be a large number of dependencies that yum won't be able to find as it will be looking where Fc6 stuff is held?

Cheers,

If you can find the sources rpms you can always build the binary from that.

I'd prefer to install from source than use an f8 rpm

Note the since f7, the extras concept doesn't exist as extras was meged with core. Hence Fedora 7 not Fedora Core 7 (or 8 or 9)

OK. It looks like I will have to build from source if no one else has any advice as to where an FC6 binary can be found.
Not the best solution, but may have to live with it.
Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Why??
It seems to me that any distro maintainer would rather put the effort into future improvements as opposed to supplying the latest apps for outdated versions.

What is the relative effort to upgrade Fedora vs compiling GIMP?

Why?
Well I guess I would ask why not?
FC6 isn't that 'old', and I seem to recall new versions of apps being made available for previous (older) versions of Linux distributions.
I don't expect Linux distribution maintainers to do that work, but guessed that somewhere, someone has built Gimp 2.4.2 for FC6 as a package.
I really can't answer the last question for anyone else, but I have tried upgrading FC6 to F7 (from DVD, via net is out) and that was a disaster, the dist was quite broken, so not having seen any later versions on DVD I will wait and see how I go when a DVD of F8 is available.
Regarding compiling Gimp, I suspect that wouldn't be a big issue, but that path cuts across the whole reason for using a package manager.
Thanks for your comments.

Cheers,

One thing you have to make a note of is the way the Fedora distro release works. Fedora 8 was released recently and this means that the only officially supported versions are now 7 and 8 because the Fedora Project only support two of the latest versions at any given time. Most packagers would rather focus on current releases instead of building packages for distros that have reached their end of life and this is probably why you are struggling to find a new GIMP rpm.