GTK issue

[Guest Yavitz]

I have been trying to get gtk working for the past three days with no progress. From what I can see Mandrake 10.1 comes with GTK+-2.0 installed. The problem is when I try to install software which requires GTK it can't find it. I have tried installing GTK from the source downloads but I always get stuck trying to install the dependencies. Any ideas would be greatly appriciated.

[Crashdamage]

You really have been going about things the hard way. Instead of trying to install GTK from source, all you need to do is open Mandrake Control Center and select 'Software Management" (GUI method) or use urpmi (CLI method) and install GTK from there. Or installing any software that uses GTK will also automatically install the required GTK packages with it, including resolving all dependencies.

Before you do anything else, it would be best to uninstall anything GTK you've installed from source to avoid any conflicts.

 

Go to the "Easy-Urpmi" link at the top of this forum's opening page and follow the instructions for setting up online sources for software and you'll be ready to install almost anything you want click-click easy or by typing a single command. Also check the FAQs, Tips & Tricks sections or 'man urpmi' for much more info.

 

I always say "Don't install from source packages except as a last resort." This because package managers for any distro, whether .rpm or .deb based, are only aware of software installed from rpms or debs. Source installs are not recorded in their database, so problems can occur with conflicts of versions, installation of multiple versions, etc. Admittedly, serious problems from source installs is unlikely, but it can and does happen, particularly if installing major stuff like xorg, gcc, KDE, etc. If you always install proper packages then urpmi, apt - whatever - can properly keep everything installed on your system straight. Also, uninstalling a package is far simpler.

[daniewicz]

Nice detailed reply Crashdamage. On behalf of all the MDK newbs out there I say Thank You.

[Guest Yavitz]

Thanks for the reply Crashdamage, when I get home this afternoon I will be sure to try that. I have already cleaned out all of the files that I installed from source. I really hope this works it's been driving me crazy.

 

 

EDIT: Ok I did what you suggested and updated my media using easy-urpmi. However when I do urpmi gtk+2.0 it says everything already installed. So I am assuming everything is correct. The problem comes when I try to install ettercap it says it cant find the package. I think my pkg-config might not be pointing to it however There is no .pc gtk file.

Edited March 24, 2005 by Yavitz

[adamw]

You're trying to compile ettercap, right?

 

Well, first of all, try urpmi ettercap. Always do this before trying to compile anything. :)

 

If MDK doesn't have a package for something you want, or you _really need_ a newer version, then you may have to compile from source. In this case, the reason it's not working is because you have the part of GTK+ needed to actually _use_ GTK+ applications, but not the part needed to _compile_ them. On Linux, most libraries contain files that will never be needed to run applications, only to compile them. MDK splits these out into a separate package to save space for users who don't need to compile things. All these packages end with this:

 

-devel

 

So in this specific case, the package you need is:

 

libgtk+2.0-devel

 

Whenever you get a compile error that tells you 'foobar isn't found' or something similar, what you need is almost certainly 'libfoobar-devel'.

Edited March 24, 2005 by adamw