Slackware

Gnucash on Slackware

With Gnucash having evolved into a Gnome 2 application, and Slackware Gnome support being picked up by Dropline Gnome, it has become much easier to install Gnucash on a Slackware system. In fact, we may even hope for the day when Gnucash itself is distributed with Dropline Gnome. In the meantime, here are some success stories.

Slack 11 + GnuCash 2

Outline follows. See this page with more details.

1. Start with a fresh Slack 11 installation
2. Do a full dropline install. Probably only a few Dropline packages are required - if someone has time it would be a great contribution to figure out what the minimum set of packages is.
3. removepkg guile-1.8.0-i486-1
4. Install guile 1.6.8 from sources
5. Install g-wrap 1.3.4 from sources
6. Install slib 2d6
7. ./configure && make && make install.

Slack 11 + GWARE Rev H. - Sorry for the length. The following are a guide lines to using GWARE and trying to stick with the original versions of packages that come with slackware. Please read ALL the steps and ALL the notes before begining the install process.

Outline:

1. Fresh Slackware 11.0 install
2. Full GWARE Rev. H install
3. install libgsf-1.14.1 from the slackware sources *I
4. Guile Does not need to be reinstalled... I think... if you have problems use the same trick as libgsf *II
5. ln -s /usr/share/guile/1.8 /usr/share/guile/site
6. install Slib3a1 and set guile up to use it *III
7. install guile-lib 0.1.3 with prefix /usr *IV
8. install g-wrap 1.9.6 with prefix /usr *V
9. install gnucash-2.0.4 *VI

I - the libgsf-1.14.1 that comes with slackware is missing the libgsf-gnome lib files that are required by gnucash. Also, GWARE Rev H. does not include a libgsf package.

To install libgsf automagically as a slackware package:

1. download the libgsf files from a slackware mirror
2. edit the BUILD variable in libgsf.SlackBuild to be something like '1gca' so that you know it is different than the one installed with slackware.
3. upgradepkg /location/of/libgsf-1.14.1-i486-1gca.tgz

II - guile-lib and g-wrap need to be installed with the prefix /usr because they will install files into /prefix/share/guile/site.

III - I didn't try slib 3a2. However, 3a3 and 3a4 were not setting up correctly.

To install slib3a1:

1. tar xvzf /path/to/slib3a1.tar.gz -C /usr/local/lib/slib
2. cd /usr/local/lib/slib
3. make
4. make install

NOTE: slib3a1 makefile appears to only install the documentation where as slib3a3 and 3a4 install slib into /usr/local/lib/slib

To set up guile to use slib3a1 (IE: create the slibcat file):

1. ln -s /usr/local/lib/slib /usr/share/guile/site/slib
2. guile -l /usr/share/guile/site/slib/
3. guile> (require 'new-catalog)
4. guile> (quit)

NOTE: we can test the guile/slib set up with:

guile -c "(use-modules (ice-9 slib)) (require 'printf)"

the output should be nothing. If it says something, then I can't help you.

IV - g-warp's testsuite will fail if guile-lib is not installed. I do not know if this is requiered by anything other than to pass g-wraps tests

To install guile-lib:

./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make install

The test suite might have one or two fails arround os.process.scm

V - newer versions can produce an error when gnucash loads.

To install g-wrap:

./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make check && make install

There were no problems.

VI - This takes a while:

./configure && make && make check && make install

I recieved "FAILURE end of quarter test-freq-spec.c" and a few ** CRITICAL ** messages for qof_class_get_parameter, xaccSplitSetAccount, FindCommonExclSCurrency.

Slack 10.1 + GnuCash 1.8

See this writeup by J. Milgram and also this writeup provided by Amigo Linux.

Slack 9.0/9.1 + GnuCash 1.8

See this writeup by RJ Marquette. RJ has also provided directions for installing the help files.

Prebuilt packages and other links

• Some pre-built GnuCash packages for Slackware, including packages for Slack 7 and 8. Haven't tried these - perhaps someone could comment on them. Some (or all?) of these were built by Jay the Obscure who offers other Slackware 10.2 Packages as well.
• Rich Shepard offers a prebuilt GnuCash 2 package for Slackware 10.2.

--Milgram 19:28, 7 January 2007 (EST)