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

[Rolf Turner]

On Wed, 26 Aug 2020 09:06:38 -0000
Paul <claws at thewildbeast.co.uk> wrote:

Please see in-line below.

> 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 desperately want to keep my hands clean!!!  I have enough trouble
coping with "stable" software.  I shall avoid git!!! :-)

> 
> > > 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

Now that bit of advice has practically saved my life!!!  I was
thrashing around doing ./autogen.sh and getting told that there were
packages that I needed and then I'd try to install those, which in turn
required further packages and then the installs wouldn't work ....

But "sudo apt build-dep claws-mail" made all these problems magically
go away.  My cup runneth over!!! :-)
 
> > > 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.

That is a useful suggestion.  I did that, and then did make, and make
install.  And everything seems to work. It's a miracle! :-)
> 
> 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

No conflicts seem to arise --- not that I can discern anyway.  And
all the filtering rules that I set up, and other choices that I made,
seem to persist into the updated version of claws-mail.

So once I got rolling (thanks to sudo apt build-dep) the transition
from 3.16.0 to 3.17.6 was about as seamless as it is possible to
imagine.

Thanks hugely!

cheers,

Rolf

-- 
Honorary Research Fellow
Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276