[Digikam-users] Compiling Issues (my version of the wheel)

[Hevï Guy]

Thank-you everybody, for not taking too much offense at my rant. I can
see where "Newbie Fatigue" can get quite frustrating for those of you
who find this to be a second nature piece of cake. Yes, it will probably
do us good to experience similar wounds as the experts had when they
jumped through the same flaming barbed wire hoops . The problem for many
of us Newbs is that because we don't come from the same Computer World,
our wounds can be quite fatal since we don't even know which hoops to
jump through. If we're lucky enough we can continue to scour the
internet, pickling up bits and pieces of instructions, here and there.
Unfortunately, many times, the information is conflicting and we end up
in a pit somewhere, unable to climb out and left calling for help.

My problem during my most-recent journey was finding all of the right
dependencies. The instructions on the digiKam site were not very clear
on this. Yes, links to other relevant pages and text files were there,
but there wasn't a single source where all of this information was then
aggregated for final consumption. This left me guessing at what I had to
do next. Even if some of the dependencies that I uncovered were correct
versions, I had no idea where to install them. I think that rather than
relating all of the steps along the often-tortuous path that we've taken
before finally falling into the pit, it would be so much easier if,
right from the start, we had a concise "master map" to follow. Then, if
we do something stupid, it would probably be much less frustrating (!)
for those volunteers who have successfully navigated these pitfalls to
pull us through the rest of the way.

I think that I've finally found such a detailed map:
http://www.digikam.org/drupal/download/SvnAlongStable (thank you very
much, Mike Hansen!). Since this is Ubuntu-specific rather than the
Fedora instructions graciously provided earlier by Christian (thanks
again Christian!), I should be able follow it a little easier. I'll go
along, step-by-step, and see where it takes me. Hopefully I won't have
to bother you all again. 

* I now understand that a big part of the problem is Ubuntu's glacial
pace at providing updated packages. I also understand that this is why
it's necessary to "roll one's own" from a number of individual sources.
What I don't understand is why everybody is forced to do this, thus
reinventing the wheel. Why, along with the source files, isn't there an
option to simply download and install a single tarball with everything
already included? Yeah, it's a weanie desire not to want to slog through
the quagmire that the initial inventor traversed but, it sure would make
life much simpler ;-)

Happy Holidays! 
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