[Users] Installing claws-mail from source ....

[Paul]

On Sun, 23 Aug 2020 19:19:13 +1200
Rolf Turner <r.turner at auckland.ac.nz> wrote: 

> On Sun, 23 Aug 2020 02:48:51 +0000
> Richard <lists-claws at listmail.innovate.net> wrote:
> 
<snip>   
> > 
> > You can get a tarball of the source for 3.17.6 from the link at: 
> > 
> >   <https://claws-mail.org/releases.php>   
> 
> Is it better to use this than to use the source that one can obtain via
> Git?  Or is there any real difference.

There is a real difference. Git is development, new code goes there.
It is possible that sometimes this might introduce new bugs, or might have
half-finished work for a small period, and all the other ups and downs of
development versions.

When using the git code you can give early feedback to the development team
on changes that happen there.

You should stick to the release tarballs unless you are willing to get your
hands dirty from time to time.

> > I've found it fairly straight forward to compile from that (on
> > centos). Check the output from your run of ./configure to see if your
> > system is missing anything and proceed accordingly.  
> 
> Good advice.  I'll do that.

To pull in all the dependencies before trying, use:

sudo apt build-dep claws-mail

> > The default install is in /usr/local so you should be able to install
> > and test it separate from your repo installed version.  
> 
> That's good to know.

You can set whatever prefix you want by passing --prefix=[PATH] to the
configure script. For example, you can use a directory in your homedir,
e.g. ~/cm, then it will be completely separated and easy to remove later.

If you leave your build dir untouched after make install then you can use
make uninstall later.

> But could this result in conflicts in respect of
> the files in ~/.claws-mail?

It happens from time to time, but rarely. See https://claws-mail.org/cvc.php

with regards

Paul