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

[Luis Guzman]

En 29/05/25 15:16, Heime escribió:
[...]
> 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.
I understand it can feel a bit daunting at first, but if you’d like to 
rebuild emacs from the sources already in the repositories, here’s a 
straightforward way to do it:

sudo apt build-dep emacs

apt source emacs

cd emacs-*

dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc

this will build the version currently in the repos. From there, you can 
start experimenting with your own changes, or even learn more about the 
Debian packaging workflow.
>
> 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.
That’s actually pretty typical for distributions that follow a point 
release model, stability and long-term support tend to take priority 
over having the absolute latest versions.

>
> 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.

That’s one of the main trade-offs with Debian-based distributions, most 
of the integration work is done up front, so things "just work"™ once 
installed, but this usually means you won’t always get the very latest 
package versions. Trisquel’s model is closer to Ubuntu LTS and 
prioritizes reliability.

>
> What could you suggest can be done a bit better here?
One suggestion could be to use the Guix package manager available at 
Trisquel.
> 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.

Like with most things, the process can seem difficult before you get 
familiar with it, but once you’ve built or packaged software a few 
times, it tends to feel much more manageable.

>
> 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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