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

[Heime]

On Friday, May 30th, 2025 at 10:29 AM, Luis Guzman <ark at switnet.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> 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.

I shall look into the capability very closely.
 
> > 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.

I had managed to install the latest versions, but it is becoming more cumbersome 
to do for the current releases. 
 
> > 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/