[Trisquel-devel] Installing dependencies for latest emacs and gcc releases

[Heime]

On Friday, May 30th, 2025 at 8:49 AM, Luis Guzman <ark at switnet.org> wrote:

> En 29/05/25 14:27, Heime escribió:
> 
> > As it stands, there are simply too many stumbling blocks. If we want
> > people to actually use the tools we're building, we ought to make it
> > just a bit easier for them to get started.
> 
> 
> The point of using a point release distro is that the software is well
> tested and configured for that point in time, that's also one of the
> reasons is very well stable among the bast repository ecosystem. That's
> ~65 thousand packages.
> 
> I've mentioned this before, and old package on a point release distro
> like Trisquel, Ubuntu, Debian is not an issue, as long as the package
> can continue to provide the function it was doing when it got in the
> repo, if that package has some security issues it has to be addressed,
> but that doesn't mean it will get updated to the latest, some times, a
> single change can fix the issue without disturbing the package, that's
> the most advised path, when a new distro release comes out, then we can
> have all the new stuff at that point in time.
> 
> For the most part Debian has some great tools and platforms to modify,
> (re-)build and compile software, if you take the time to get familiar
> with them then you'll notice is much easier than trying to look for
> documentation on packages that has not being "debianized" at all.
> 
> So in sum, the tools in place are already simple to follow, I think you
> may (or may not ) be missing the potential and work already built-in out
> of APT and the Debian building tools, even at the debian folder on any
> package on the repo. Jumping out in the dark, sure it might be
> overwhelming, but once you are familiar with the process, it's not that
> hard.
> 
> That said, if you want always the latest and greatest you can use the
> Guix repository, maybe something like Parabola (a rolling release
> distro) other than having to compile from source yourself every single
> time which might get complex on a LTS release.

Alright, let's not ask for the moon just yet - but some of the basics for 
developers: Emacs and GCC.  Compiling either from source on Trisquel 11 is 
anything but straightforward right now.

Trisquel 11 ships with GCC-12 and Emacs-27.1 - both lagging well behind 
the current GCC-15.1 and Emacs-30.1.  Now, I understand we can't always 
have the latest and greatest, and there’s a bit of sense in sticking with 
tried-and-true versions for stability.  Still, Trisquel 11 was released 
in March 2023, when Emacs 28.2  was already out.

So even at launch, things were a bit behind the curve.

What's more, if you want to build from source, you're in for a bit of a 
slog.  The documentation isn’t tailored for Trisquel, and you're left 
piecing together dependencies and workarounds from scraps.

What could you suggest can be done a bit better here?  Maybe not always 
the bleeding edge, but at least make it easier for developers to get up 
and running with newer versions before a major release - especially for 
the essentials like Emacs and GCC.  Otherwise, working on development 
ends up much harder than it needs to be.

Regards


> Regards.
> 
> --
> Luis A. Guzmán G.
> http://ark.switnet.org
> 
> Capitulo Mexicano de Software Libre - https://cmxsl.org
> Software Libre con raíz ética, acción local y visión nacional.
> 
> Por tu propio bien, y en solidaridad a todos, elige la libertad.
> ¡Sé Libre! - https://fsfla.org/selibre/
> 
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