Does Sourcery Slackbuild Manager actually work?

[paul]

Have tried to download about 6 different programs and apart from one exception they either bombed out because they do not download properly, or cannot be found anywhere on my system after the compile.
So how useful is Sourcery Slackbuild Manager?
Or am I doing something wrong?
Paul.

[gapan]

Does Sourcery Slackbuild Manager actually work?

Yes.

So how useful is Sourcery Slackbuild Manager?

Very.

Or am I doing something wrong?

You are doing something wrong. One thing you're certainly doing wrong is that you don't provide any details.

[hakerdefo]

Have tried to download about 6 different programs and apart from one exception they either bombed out because they do not download properly, or cannot be found anywhere on my system after the compile.
So how useful is Sourcery Slackbuild Manager?
Or am I doing something wrong?
Paul.

paul your installs are failing because of missing dependencies. The following is official description of Dependency support in Sourcery,

Sourcery can use the dependency information for SlackBuilds that slapt-src provides, but dependencies are only supported for SlackBuilds repositories that include such information. The SlackBuilds.org repository doesn't include any dependency information, so the users need to resolve dependencies themselves when using SlackBuilds from that repository. The SlackBuild description and README files can provide some insight on needed dependencies. You can view those, along with other SlackBuild informaion, using the "Get information" menu entry when right clicking on a SlackBuild

So you have to hunt down and install missing deps first and then try to install the app with sourcery.

[mimosa]

In Sourcery, select to view Info and amongst other things, you'll be told about dependencies. Or go and look on the relevant page at http://slackbuilds.org. It's also worth reading the general information there about how to use the resource. Sourcery now offers limited dependency support, but it isn't as robust as the dependency management for Salix's own repos (which is tested for each package).

In many cases, the last lines of the output of slapt-src (which can be viewed within its graphical frontend, Sourcery) may give a pretty good idea of what is missing or whatever else may have gone wrong. But the best thing is to find out about the dependencies in advance (install them either with Gslapt, or failing that, Sourcery itself - in which case the same procedure applies recursively). In general, you can expect to have to do a bit of tweaking now and then (whereas the precompiled packages from Salix repos should aways just work).

Read more about Sourcery in the Salix user guide.

[Tim CowChip]

Have tried to download about 6 different programs and apart from one exception they either bombed out because they do not download properly, or cannot be found anywhere on my system after the compile.
So how useful is Sourcery Slackbuild Manager?
Or am I doing something wrong?
Paul.

If you using Salix-14.0, your Sourcery repos should be
http://salix.enialis.net/sbo/14.0/
and
http://salix.enialis.net/slkbuild/14.0/

If you remove the sbo repo you're left with 2 packages, pastebinit and pnm2ppa. In other words Sourcery is an interface for installing packages from Slackbuilds.org.
There was an effort six months ago to "clean up" the slackbuild files for broken download links, etc. The repo was then copied from http://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/ to http://salix.enialis.net/slkbuild/14.0/ and then frozen. In the meantime Slackbuilds.org's repo has been updated 15 times with hundred's of updated packages

There should be, but isn't a method in place for updating the Sourcery repo at http://salix.enialis.net/slkbuild/14.0/ with these updates.
This may be to avoid yet another "clean up" every time it gets updated or to comply with the Stability through Deprecation policy that this OS embraces.

In any case you may want to try a tool that was created by and for the Slackbuild.org user community. Sbopkg

[kcirick]

Hello,

Just to add to the same topic, I just did a kernel upgrade yesterday (to the latest 3.2.43 kernel). I wanted to update the broadcom-sta package since the module has to be recompiled for each kernel. In theory, 'upgrading' this package in sourcery should do just this (in a pop up window, it displays messages saying it is compiling with the new kernel). However, for some reason, the newly created module did not install properly (the module never got installed in /lib/modules/3.2.43/kernel directory).

Doing the manual install using slackbuild package worked, but had to remind myself how to do that (instead of just opening sourcery and point and click). It could be that I did something wrong, but I think Sourcery gets confused when something fundamental has changed in the system (such as kernel version).

[paul]

Hi All, Thanks for that information.
I get the general feeling that this is fairly complex and one can screw up marvelously with Sourcery.
So maybe I will stick for now to the Gslapt Package Manager, that at least works most of the time.
One thing I am particularly concerned about is the space I have left on the hard drive on this little machine, which is just over 2 GB; downloading a lot of dependencies would certainly tend to clog up the works.
One of the things I was looking for was some app with a decent set of card games, there is a package available through Gslapt Package Manager that has some good card games in it; but most of the games in that package I am not interested in; and as space is limited.........
Anyhow, thanks again. This is not a high priority and as it stands I am enjoying Salix immensely.
Paul.

[laprjns]

In theory, 'upgrading' this package in sourcery should do just this (in a pop up window, it displays messages saying it is compiling with the new kernel). However, for some reason, the newly created module did not install properly (the module never got installed in /lib/modules/3.2.43/kernel directory).

The slackbuild script controls the installation of the module through these lines of code:

# Install the module
mkdir -p $PKG/lib/modules/$KERNEL/kernel/extra
cp wl.ko $PKG/lib/modules/$KERNEL/kernel/extra

These lines get executed no matter if the script is invoke by sourcery or manually, so its highly unlikely that a confused sourcey was the cause of the module not getting installed. Did you confirm that your system was running the newly installed kernel before you tried building the broadcom-sta module with sourcery?

[laprjns]

I get the general feeling that this is fairly complex and one can screw up marvelously with Sourcery.

Paul, sourcery is neither complex nor has a high risk of screwing up your system; and it does work rather well given the the limitation of building from source and slackbuilds philosophy that dependencies needs to be taken care of by the users. What you experience with the six packages that you tried to build is quite common as can be seen by the many posts in this forum regarding failed builds using sourcery. Had you posted about any of these failed builds with sufficient information I'm sure that someone would have come along and help you resolve the problem.

The two main issues with sourcery and its command line equivalent slapt-src are dependency management and broken links to the source code. Limited dependency resolution was added to both sourcery and slapt-src recently, but it still needs the dependency information that should be included in the slackbuild info file. Many slackbuild packages still do not have dependency information and therefore are bound to fail if the user does not recognize this. BTW, you would have the same problem with dependancy resolution with the Sbopkg application that was recommended.

As for the second issue, broken links, this is an inherent problem with build from source repositories as source repositories get move around over time. This is especially true with stable applications that do not get updated often. The source file gets moved to a new server and the slackbuild link is broken. As TimCow pointed out, the Salix developers fixed the vast majority of these broken links in the slackbuild repo by updating the Salix mirror with the new links and then disabling the synchronization with the slackbuild repo. If the salix repo where allow to resync with the slackbuild repo, then all the work to fix the broken links would have been thrown out with the next rsync. The drawback to this is that the salix repo is static and does not include all the new updates that the slackbuild repo has experienced over the last few months. You can get access to these new updates by adding http://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/14.0/ to the slapt-srcrc file. Just be aware that you may see two options for some applications. Here's an example:

Code: Select all

root[rich]# slapt-src --se gpodder
gpodder:2.6 - gPodder (GTK2 media aggregator)
gpodder:3.4.0 - gPodder (GTK2 media aggregator)

So I suggest you give sourcey another try and if you run into problems, just post the information here in the forum and we will help you through it.

[Tim CowChip]

You can get access to these new updates by adding http://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/14.0/ to the slapt-srcrc file. Just be aware that you may see two options for some applications.

I tried this before and it didn't work, so I thought sbopkg was the best alternative. After reading your post, I tried again, adding the SBO repo to Sourcery, and it worked this time.

So thanks for posting that tip, Laprjns.