Ive recently installed Linux Debian/GNU. I downloaded an IM program called Pidgin (http://www.pidgin.im/) and it was only available in source. But when I run ./configure in the directory of the source files i get this.... checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu checking target system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c checking whether build environment is sane... yes checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p checking for gawk... no checking for mawk... mawk checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes checking for sed... /bin/sed checking for gcc... no checking for cc... no checking for cl.exe... no configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH See `config.log' for more details. josh@HPDESKTOP:~/Source/pidgin-2.3.1$ Then I read the README and it said... In order to compile Pidgin you need to have GTK+ 2.0 installed (as well as the development files!). Now my problem I cant find this dam GTK+ 2.0 thing. I looked in Aptitude (the assistant for apt) and found nothing. Can someone help me out, this is really getting on my nerves? I think I either need GTK or an alternative maybe?
You will break etch with that GTK version..(unless you want to mess about with "alternatives") You need to install the etch backports repositories.. http://emiscabpo.wordpress.com/about/ Personally I use xchat and gaim.. they are mature applications which unfortunately seem to be being dropped.
You can.. but as there is a compiled version available backported for your version of debian why not use it? To build the source code you have you will need to do all the work the backporters have already done.. modifying the source to link correctly with your versions of libraries and compilers. You can set up a development path with alternative versions of all the needed tools and libraries, but you will run into trouble if you do that because the dependencies will all still probably be wrong when you come to the final installation step. I learned a very long time ago (potato) to stick with released code from the same generation as my core system.. ones from the past are usually ok, but going to upstream programs is a pretty big no no with debian XD Lets put it this way.. I have broken my debian on many occasions with a seemingly insignificant upstream package.
Rather than use Etch which varnull has said is dodgy at best, you need to use Lenny. Problem here is that Lenny is the "testing version", works for me (after a bit of F**kin around), and therefore not for the n00b. in a nutshell, if you need to ask how to solve these dependencies in source upstream packages you don't have the skills needed to build them successfully. NB: I started on n00buntu, then Etch and now on Lenny, i learnt from the ground up.
