Synaptic = HELP !

[Michael Vogt]

On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 11:20:03AM +0100, Trouilliez Vincent wrote:
> I hope a Ubuntu developper can help me here ! :-/
> 
> Gnumeric 1.4.0 has just been released a few days ago.
> 
> Some very kind gentleman informed me that on this ftp site :
> ftp://ftp.ubuntulinux.org:/ubuntu/pool/main
> 
> there are already .deb packages for it.  this is obviously a Ubuntu
> site, so I thought, how comes that this new version doesn't show when I
> click on the "reload/refresh" button in Synaptic ??

Synaptic will only display packages in the distribution you set in the
repository window. If you use the "warty" distribution, you won't see
gnumeric as it's part of the ubuntu development tree "hoary". We only
do security update for warty.
 
> So, I made a (very pathetic) atttempt at adding this address into
> sources.list, which (obviously) failed miserably : it says that it
> failed to downaload the index file or something along that line.

You can easily add the "hoary" distribution to the list of your
repositories. I wouldn't recommend to do this unless you are aware of
the risks. It's a development branch that may fail spectacular. If you
nevertheless want to use it go to the synaptic repository editor and
search the "warty" distribution and change it to "hoary".
(you may also have a look at
https://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/PinningHowto for yet another way to
get gnumeric without complettely switching to hoary).

> So I just pulled all the packages (ie, it still needed many
> dependencies) using gFTP.
[..]

I wouldn't recommand that method it leads to all sorts of problem (as
you already experienced) when you try to hunt down the dependencies
manually and try to install them via "dpkg -i <pkg>". Apt (and
synaptic) are really good at keeping your system in a consistent
state. 
 
bye,
 Michael

-- 
The first rule of holes is: when you find yourself in one, stop digging. - PJ
Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question. - Neo