On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:15 PM, Mark David Dumlao <madum...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm installing a 3rd party binary on my system (odesk team) from here: > http://www.odesk.com/community/linux > > I remember last time I just picked the latest 64bit fedora version, > extracted their stuff, and placed it somewhere in opt. Recently > though, the app has been giving me some trouble, so I checked if there > was a later version and I was 3 minor revisions behind. Whoops! The > latest fc version depends on libpng12.
When dealing with binaries designed for other distros, I can think of 2 ways to possibly help keep things sane. First would be to write an ebuild for it which enforces the required library versions (if you know them) and will enable portage to prevent breakage in the future. Second would be to run it in a virtual machine or a container with one of the other linux distros installed in it, that way you're using their preferred environment for the app and can upgrade it independently of the rest of your Gentoo system. > I'll probably try the arch version instead, but I'm curious now. If > ever I should install libpng12 (slotted to 1.2), what happens on my > next emerge? Configure will use a libpng version to use for compiles, > but which one will it use? Will my system still be mostly on libpng14 > or is there a chance that some recompiles go back to libpng12? Havng > spent so much energy getting it one way I'd rather not have it > reversed. I think that if the 2 versions are slotted then you should be okay, new emerges should use the latest version; programs known not to work with the new version should force use of the old one (if you had any of those, you'd already have the old libpng because they'd already require it).
