Configuring/compiling gbuffy on modern Debian systems.

[Duncan]

A. F. Cano posted on Sun, 27 Aug 2017 17:09:09 -0400 as excerpted:

> 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:

This is a kde list, not a gtk/gnome list, so your question is technically 
off topic here.

But gtk1 is long unsupported and is likely quite a security problem by 
now, and gbuffy appears to be a gtk1-based mail notifier that hasn't been 
ported forward to gtk2 or gtk3.

And there's all sorts of other mail notifiers available, so the question 
is, why are you trying to install something that old, unsupported, 
security-vulnerable and inconvenient to install, when there are so many 
other alternatives available?  What's so special about gbuffy that you 
/must/ use it instead of some other alternative that's still available in 
your distro's repo for a far simpler install?

FWIW, the gbuffy descriptions I could google said similar to xbiff/
xbuffy.  On gentoo (which I use) simply doing a package search, including 
description, on "biff", returns a number of alternatives, some console, 
some X-based.  Debian is said to have a larger package repo than most 
distros so it's likely to have these and more:

* kbiff (kde-based, making it the actual on-topic one =:^)

* gnubiff (gtk3-based, with a gtk2-based version also available, likely 
the most direct actually still available in the repo alternative to 
gbuffy)

* xbiff

* hap (terminal-based biff replacement)

* asmail (similar to xbiff, so X-based)

* wmbiff (windowmaker dock applet)

In addition to whatever info your package management system provides 
about each of these, you should be able to google most or all of them for 
the application home page, get screenshots, etc.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman