Libraries and dependencies (Re: [Techtalk] "I need to use Windows because ...")

[Mary]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2002, Poppy wrote:
> I'm using urpmi in Mandrake.... what I've found most of the time is
> that when installing something I found online (as opposed to something
> from my install cds or one of the online mirrors), I have to satisfy
> the dependencies myself... it is more than happy to tell me I need
> libfoo10.so, but can't find it on its own. I typically have to find
> which package installed libfoo10.so and let it install that package
> along with the program I was trying to install in the first place.

You might want to add Mandrake Cooker sources to your urpmi list of
sources, if it isn't there already. Mandrake Cooker is roughly the
equivalent of Debian's unstable.

But yes, if you've found a package elsewhere, it is likely that not all
the libraries it depends on will be foudn in Mandrake's sources, since
obviously Mandrake has no control over who develops packages for
Mandrake, they can only control their own sources.

Debian encourages people to make their packages part of the Debian
system so that things like apt-get will resolve the dependencies for
you, which is why a *complete* set of Debian install CDs is around 20
CDs (it's normally sufficient to install from the first two, because
they order the packages by popularity).

In the case of Mandrake packages, I would suggest either contacting
Mandrake and asking them to make the package part of Mandrake in the
future, or contacting the author and asking them to make the
dependencies available or to point to them, since it's really only the
author you can influence, and most of them don't read techtalk :(

-Mary.