Arch Linux

cosmo

Member

Registered: 2007-05-21

Posts: 14

[SOLVED] Installing compiz-fusion without testing repo

Hi everyone,

I've been pleased to use compiz-fusion from the nesl247 repository for a few months.

But after an update I had non window borders... so I searched the forum and wiki et did how indicated, upgrade my system with the testing repo.

But after that it was a mess, with my applets crashing or awn at the wrong place on my desktop...

Well, for another reason I had to make a fresh install of my system, so I'd like to know if it's possible to install compiz-fusion without the testing repo; or without doing an entire upgrade (just the packages needed).

I want to keep a stable system.. Can you tell me how ?

Thanks.

Last edited by cosmo (2007-10-02 12:18:38)

DevilsDecoy

Member

From: Norway

Registered: 2007-01-06

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] Installing compiz-fusion without testing repo

As of now you need libx11 and libwnck from testing. I haven't got any major problems using those two (and some dependencies) from testing, but some icons are missing. It shouldn't be too hard to go back to current/extra if you get into trouble, at least if you know which packages are from testing (pacman -Syu without testing repo enabled should show this).

harlekin

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2006-07-13

Posts: 408

Re: [SOLVED] Installing compiz-fusion without testing repo

Well, as I cannot find any source where this has been explained before (even several times by myself), here it is again:

Basically there are three way how to handle this. Each of them being affected by their individual up- and downsides.

1) You can just download the package from a mirror out of the testing directory and install the package manually. Depending on the package this may be a dependency mess. To avoid this, enable testing and install only the particular package. Disable testing after having the package installed.

This method is only mentioned because it seems to be highly used. This method is definitely not recommended, mainly because repositories are not intended to be used this way. testing packages are compiled against the testing repository which means, if you pull in only one or a few packages, there may be conflicts between the testing package and the "stable" package it depends on. Like linkage errors or worse.

2) You can get the PKGBUILD from ABS and compile and install the packages you want from testing yourself.

This method is the most recommended one. Using this method, your package will be compiled against the installed packages and not against packages you don't even have installed. The downside is that you have to put more effort into it and the time of compiling adds to the prior time consume of changing pacman's config and installing the packages.

3) If you want to use more bleeding edge packages than the stable repositories offer, use the bleeding edge repositories. This is the only warranty that the packages are working on your system. Well, the best warranty you can get in arch because the packages are not stable nor bug free. Most likely testing is not a big deal concerning how often a system update breaks something. Of course this can be the case - and that more often than stable updates do - but most likely this isn't a big deal. If you want to use testing packages, you have at least to be prepared to deal with those problems anyway.

This being said, I suggest the second approach for you particular purpose.

---

Hail to the thief!

cosmo

Member

Registered: 2007-05-21

Posts: 14

Re: [SOLVED] Installing compiz-fusion without testing repo

I think your second solution is the best to do.

But I've some dependencies problems... (I barely never used ABS). I compiled and installed libx11 without difficulty, but libwnck requires gtk2.12 -gtk2.10 on my system). I'm pretty sure that gtk2 has a lot of dependencies, so before compiling everything by hand, I thought about yaourt...

I often use yaourt for AUR packages, but it seems to be possible to compile programs from ABS too (the -b option).

But when I try

yaourt -Sb testing/gtk2

It finds the gtk2 from [core] repo (gtk2.10)...
So my question is how to tell to yaourt to compile programs from [testing], and not from [core].

Doing so I guess it would be easy to install and maintain everything. What do you think ?

cosmo

Member

Registered: 2007-05-21

Posts: 14

Re: [SOLVED] Installing compiz-fusion without testing repo

My "problem" is solved. I did the second solution, with ABS by hand, and everything was fine.

So in order to install compiz-fusion via the nesl247 repo I had to compile from ABS these packages, I think in this order :
-libX11
-atk
-gtk2
-libwnck

I thought I had to compile many things but no actually.
Thanks for your help, compiz-fusion was installed withount any problem after that.