But why? [was: "Re: Can't locate gconf-2.0 needed by gnucash"]

[Rapael Morcha]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 05:27:26PM -0600, Mike Adolf wrote:
> Hi Froy,
> 
> gconf2 was already installed.  I went back to synapics and found
> gconf2-dev, and since I was compiling from source, thought maybe I
> needed it. I installed it and the gconf2 error went away. However,
> others appeared. I had to chase down 5 additional -dev pkgs to install.
> Everything compiled and installed and seems to be working OK.

FYI, you needed the *-dev packages because you were trying to compile (make) the executable file from source (the *.tar.gz in most cases). These files need access to the *-dev (development files) because in essence what you are doing under the hood is compiling the sources of your desired software which gets the source definitions (how they are defined) from the *-dev (shared library, headers etc..) files. These information are always needed when compiling from source otherwise while compiling your software, it will fail.

In Ubuntu/Debian and lot of other Gnu/Linux distribution, the packager already does this for your CPU architecture and upload them for you so that you do not have to compile from source. You just have to download them using *synaptics* or other package manager which does the hard work for you.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Ubuntu and other dev teams involved in bringing the latest Gutsy release. Thank you very much!

-- 
Cheers,
Raphael.