how to try dev builds in Debian and Ubuntu and purge them if needed

[H.S.]

Hello,

Many times I have tried to play with the dev builds temporarily. The
installation is usually straightforward, but removal is not. Here are
steps I follow for all this.

Download the dev build. Let us assume it is OOO310_dev.tgz and that it
is downloaded in /tmp

Extract the download archive:
$> cd /tmp
$> tar zxf OOO310_dev.tgz

The above step usually creates a new directory. Assume that in our
example, it is called OOO310_dev (don't delete this dir just yet, even
though it is not really needed after installation, we will use this to
extract the names of the packages that were installed).

Next, go in to the DEBS directory in that directory and install the dev
build using dpkg:
$> cd OOO310_dev/DEBS
$> sudo dpkg -i --instdir=/usr/local *.deb

Here, "--instdir=/usr/local" tells dpkg to install the package in opt
directory in /usr/local directory. Without this switch, the packages are
installed in opt directory in / directory (the default). I prefer to
custom installed packages to go to /usr/local, you may choose
differently though.

Next, start openoffice with command
/usr/local/opt/OOo/openoffice.org3/program/soffice

and play around with it.

Removing this is not intuitive, should one want to do so. What one needs
is the names of all the package that were installed earlier.

Extract the package names from the Debs (you can do this step right
after installed the DEBS above):
$> for f in *.deb; do echo $f; \
pkg=`echo $f | sed -e 's/\(.*\)_.*_.*\.deb/\1/'`; \
echo -n "$pkg " >> ~/Desktop/ooo3devpkgs.txt; done

The package names are saved then in ~/Desktop/ooo3devpkgs.txt. One just
selects these and paste these in the following command to purge the
packages that were installed:
$> sudo dpkg -P <paste the packages here>

Finally, one needs to remove the directories left over from the
installation:
$> cd /usr/local/opt
$> sudo rm -rf openoffice.org*

(NB: I fail to understand why the directories are not removed by dpkg!?)


Corrections and improvements are welcome.

Standard disclaimer: Use the above instructions at your own risk.

Regards.

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