Hi all,
I am learning and learning more in Arch linux, but I have a question.
There are a few programs that I use and I am not able to find all the
dependencies in the Arch repositories, and some of th elibraries are a
little old and the developers have .deb packages for them.
So my question is if I get a such package, may I just extract it, unpack
the data.tar.gz and copy the libraries into /usr/lib?
For example, I now need to use pygame1.8 and there is 1.9 in the arch
repository.

What do you think?
Many thanks,
Christian

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 1:42 AM, Christian <christian08@runbox.com> wrote:
> So my question is if I get a such package, may I just extract it, unpack the
> data.tar.gz and copy the libraries into /usr/lib?
> For example, I now need to use pygame1.8 and there is 1.9 in the arch
> repository.
> What do you think?

You really want to avoid having random untracked files lying around in
your system; you want to create packages with them so they are tracked
by pacman.

A good solution for your problem might be the following:

Grab an older revision of the PKGBUILD, change pkgname to something
like python-pygame-1.8 and build it. To find the revision you need to
fetch, consult the svn log [1]. In this case, for example, you'd want
r43882. To checkout that revision use:

svn co -r43882 svn://archlinux.org/packages/python-pygame/trunk
python-pygame-1.8

----
[1] http://repos.archlinux.org/wsvn/packages/python-pygame/trunk/?op=log&isdir=1&

Hello,
On 2010-10-22 01:02, Evangelos Foutras wrote:

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 1:42 AM, Christian<christian08@runbox.com> wrote:

So my question is if I get a such package, may I just extract it, unpack the
data.tar.gz and copy the libraries into /usr/lib?
For example, I now need to use pygame1.8 and there is 1.9 in the arch
repository.
What do you think?

You really want to avoid having random untracked files lying around in
your system; you want to create packages with them so they are tracked
by pacman.

A good solution for your problem might be the following:

Grab an older revision of the PKGBUILD, change pkgname to something
like python-pygame-1.8 and build it. To find the revision you need to
fetch, consult the svn log [1]. In this case, for example, you'd want
r43882. To checkout that revision use:

svn co -r43882 svn://archlinux.org/packages/python-pygame/trunk
python-pygame-1.8

----
[1] http://repos.archlinux.org/wsvn/packages/python-pygame/trunk/?op=log&isdir=1&
OK, but let's say I need some other older library how to search the svn for that?

Since I didn't know that it was the

r4388 release.

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 2:10 AM, Christian <christian08@runbox.com> wrote:
> OK, but let's say I need some other older library how to search the svn
> for that?

Find the package you're interested in from
http://www.archlinux.org/packages/ and click on it. At the right side
of the package page, you'll see a link named "SVN Entries (trunk)";
follow it. Now that you're at the websvn interface, click the link
that reads "View Log".

You are presented with a table that lists the revisions of a specific
package. On the "Log message" column you'll be able to locate the
package version you want, and you can then match that to the first
column ("Rev") which is the revision number you'll checkout.

Hi,


On 2010-10-22 at 02:20 Evangelos Foutras wrote:

>On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 2:10 AM, Christian <christian08@runbox.com> wrote:
>> OK, but let's say I need some other older library how to search the svn
>> for that?
>
>Find the package you're interested in from
>http://www.archlinux.org/packages/ and click on it. At the right side
>of the package page, you'll see a link named "SVN Entries (trunk)";
>follow it. Now that you're at the websvn interface, click the link
>that reads "View Log".
>
>You are presented with a table that lists the revisions of a specific
>package. On the "Log message" column you'll be able to locate the
>package version you want, and you can then match that to the first
>column ("Rev") which is the revision number you'll checkout.

Many thanks, will have a look.
But lets say I can't find a particular library and I only have a .deb file with it, what to do then?
Christian

On 22/10/10 08:42, Christian wrote:

For example, I now need to use pygame1.8 and there is 1.9 in the arch
repository.


As an aside, most things that work with pygame-1.8 also work with 1.9...

Allan

Hi,


On 2010-10-22 at 09:32 Allan McRae wrote:

>On 22/10/10 08:42, Christian wrote:
>> For example, I now need to use pygame1.8 and there is 1.9 in the arch
>> repository.
>
>As an aside, most things that work with pygame-1.8 also work with 1.9...
>
>Allan
How is it with python2.5 then?

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 01:26:37AM +0200, Christian wrote:
> Many thanks, will have a look.
> But lets say I can't find a particular library and I only have a .deb file with it, what to do then?

You can write a PKGBUILD that automates the process of unpacking the
".deb" package and installing the libraries into "/usr/lib/". If you
build and install a package (e.g. using `makepkg -i`) instead of copying
them manually, all libraries will be tracked by pacman(8).

If you never created a PKGBUILD before, you might wanna read something
about it in the wiki ([1], [2]). If you want an example how to do create
a package suitable for installation with pacman(8) from a dpkg, you can
check [1] (even tho this PKGBUILD isn't the best I've ever seen).

[1] http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Creating_Packages
[2] http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Packaging_Standards
[3] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=12819

On Fri, 22 Oct 2010 01:34:58 +0200
"Christian" <christian08@runbox.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> On 2010-10-22 at 09:32 Allan McRae wrote:
>
> >On 22/10/10 08:42, Christian wrote:
> >> For example, I now need to use pygame1.8 and there is 1.9 in the
> >> arch repository.
> >
> >As an aside, most things that work with pygame-1.8 also work with
> >1.9...
> >
> >Allan
> How is it with python2.5 then?
>
>
Unless the code is using something that has been deprecated/removed in
2.6/2.7, then it will work just fine in 2.7 too.