Thanks to Ray Dassen's suggestions, I got the Gnumeric deb to build. Maybe there are general lessons here that others can use. I would say an important thing for a newcomer is to learn to use nice the facilities that are available: Trouble installing a package? Check Debian bug report logs; Jody Goldberg, Gnumeric maintainer, (and others) had posted on this particular problem. Trouble with missing files? Try Debian's "Search contents of latest release" on the top level packages page. Still having trouble? debian-user mailing list has many knowledgeable people responding to queries.
Mark On Sat, 15 Sep 2001, J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) wrote: > On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 12:07:54 -0400, Mark Copper wrote: > > I am running dpkg-buildpackage on "unstable" Gnumeric sources. Make > > exits with error saying that it cannot find /usr/lib/libgdk_imlib.la. > > Check the debian/control file. It states the build dependencies, including > libgnome-dev which in turn depends on gdk-imlib-dev, which contains this > file. > > > Looking in my /usr/lib directory shows that both the corresonding static > > and shared libraries are present. > > The runtime libraries, but not the files needed for building binaries that > use them (header files, ".so" link). > > > But I don't know what an .la file is or where to source it. > > That's a file that provides information for libtool. > > HTH, > Ray >