Configuring/compiling gbuffy on modern Debian systems.

[A. F. Cano]

Hello,

Gbuffy was removed from Debian quite a few versions ago, not sure why but
I'm still using it on my Debian 7.11 system.  To install it I had to manually
install gtk 1.2 and whatever other dependencies were needed, from ubuntu
packages IIRC.

This page explains the old dependencies. The error I'm getting now is missing
gtk-config when I run autogen.sh.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/27994/installing-gtk-config-and-or-fsv-missing-gtk-dependencies

Rather than installiing really old gtk 1.2 libraries and dependencies on the
current Debian (9) I'd like to find out what needs to be done to gbuffy to
modernize it to run on current Debian.  The version of gbuffy that I found is
0.2.6.  Is there a newer version out there?  It uses autoconf to adapt to the
system it will compile on, but running autogen.sh returns this:

checking for GTK - version >= 1.1.11... no
*** The gtk-config script installed by GTK could not be found
*** If GTK was installed in PREFIX, make sure PREFIX/bin is in
*** your path, or set the GTK_CONFIG environment variable to the
*** full path to gtk-config.

It appears that gtk-config disappeared with gtk 1.x.  Is there a way to make
autoconf/autogen.sh analyze the modern GTK packages and adapt configure.sh to
work on modern systems? Or does the code need to be changed manually?

After failing to configure properly for the gtk files/locations, it's
no surprise that make fails:

gbuffy.h:12:21: fatal error: gtk/gtk.h: No such file or directory
 #include <gtk/gtk.h>

Are the newer versions of the gtk libs compatible? Would code changes be
needed in gbuffy?

What is the better/least effort way to modernize an old package such as
gbuffy for modern gtk/debian?  I would think that messing with autoconf/
autogen would be the first option and code modifications to gbuffy proper
only if absolutely necessary.

Any hints/pointers gratefully appreciated.

Thanks.