This topic accidently started as reply to '[Gimp-user] PDF' and likes to be continued here.

Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 13:36:10 -0400 From: Henry W. Peters

Hi,

Does anyone on the list here, have any actual knowledge & or experience building GIMP 2.8x on Linux Debian Squeeze? My current version of GIMP is 2.6.1.

Some questions I have (for example) are: Do I /really/ have to uninstall the old version...? Any dependency issues (conflicts, etc.) ? Any way to get the (newer) dependencies by means of the terminal? Will I be able to actually do this (i.e.,/ do a working build with this version/)?

Thanks much for any pointers.

Henry

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Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 13:33:35 -0500 From: Chris Mohler in reply to Henry W. Peters

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Henry W. Peters wrote:
> Does anyone on the list here, have any actual knowledge & or experience > building GIMP 2.8x on Linux Debian Squeeze? My current version of GIMP is > 2.6.1.
>
> Some questions I have (for example) are: Do I /really/ have to uninstall the
> old version...? Any dependency issues (conflicts, etc.) ? Any way to get the
> (newer) dependencies by means of the terminal? Will I be able to actually do
> this (i.e.,/ do a working build with this version/)?

I have 2.6 and 2.8 on the a Mint (like Ubuntu/Debian) system.

There's a build script floating around somewhere, but I can't seem to find it now (and it required heavy modification, at least for my system anyway).

There's this:
http://wiki.gimp.org/index.php/Hacking:Building/Linux

I think the biggest thing to remember is to remember to prefix everything with /opt or /home/YOU/gimp/ - ie *not* put it into /usr or /usr/local/.

'apt-get build-dep gimp' should bring in several -dev packages you'll need. The rest will need to be compiled and installed in /opt or wherever.

It's been some months since I went through this - I'm probably forgetting a few things, but the short answer is yes, you can compile and install 2.8 without removing 2.6. There are quite a dew deps to work through, but keep the additions outside of your system path and you should be fine.

HTH,
Chris

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Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 21:14:21 +0200 From: Dominik Tabisz in reply to Chris Mohler

Hi Some time ago i tried both compiling Gimp 2.8 on Squeeze, and installing Debian Testing ... to see what's wrong with my attempt to compile Gimp 2.8.

To make long thing short - problems with compilation are caused by dependencies of Gimp 2.8 dependencies. At some moment You end up with upgrading gcc and half other system libraries. If only You can install wheezy it should solve most of Your troubles.

There is one possible workaround: one user of this mailing list approached similar problem on FreeBSD. Solution was building Gimp and all it's dependencies in jail.
This way system was stable and Gimp 2.8 had all needed dependencies inside jail.
Unfortunately i can't remember where this instruction was and whether it can be ported to Debian.

Dominik

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Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 15:48:00 -0400 From: Henry W. Peters in reply to Dominik Tabisz

Thanks all for your replies ON THIS (as far as I know) NEW THREAD (& Michael, I am a subscriber).

It sounds like building 2.8 on Debian Squeeze is a (too) shaky proposition... as I do use it with some regularity, I should probably wait until the Debian packager & programmers resolve some of the dependency issues... (?) But I will persist, somehow/way...

I should have mentioned earlier, that my only desire is to have a stable/workable version of GIMP... I hesitate to uninstall 2.6.1 because of POSSIBLE issues regarding removals that might damage my system... namely 'gnome-office,' & I am just totally in the dark regarding what that piece of software is... but it sounds like something to do w/ the gui of the desktop... (advise appreciated here too).

Henry