How to tell which version of a application is running

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 16 Apr 2017 18:09:31 +0200, Xen wrote:
>I guess you meant that Arch does not have version dependencies?
>
>(I always wonder why, and if, each application actually does require
>all those updates. Do you get around that in Arch by simply being
>required to always have the latest of everything?)

More or less "yes". Official repositories not always necessarily provide
the latest stable versions from upstream, but all packages from
official repositories fit to each other. To keep it short, Arch Linux
doesn't support partial upgrades, if a user doesn't want to upgrade
everything from official repositories, the user has to manage this. It
is possible to add the version of a dependency to a package, so a user
could rebuild packages were the version is important.

>> If the OP should be unable to build Ubuntu packages, the OP should 
>> consider to test if automatically building a package using
>> "checkinstall" does the job.  
>
>That is awesome.
>
>But if you wanted to replace the original package you'd need to give
>it a proper name and version number and that would be all, right?
>
>Then you would have no reason to worry anymore?

No, it wouldn't become worriless that easy.

Taking a look at the tracker, https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/tracker ,
it's split to several packages, so when building just one package with
"checkinstall" instead of building it the Debian/Ubuntu way, there might
be the need to fulfil dependencies by e.g. building dummy packages for
libtracker* etc., this could be done using equivs,
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-helpers.en.html . I
guess the package's "Provides" option is tricky and doesn't work
without issues. There's still another issue. If the new version of
tracker provides different libs that cause soname conflicts with
packages from official repositories, depending on dedicated versions
from tracker libs. It's required to provide the old and the new
libs.
The advantage of a release model distro like Ubuntu is, that unlikely an
upgrade does cause a soname issue, so at least rebuilding the new
package should never be required and once after restoring the old libs
from a backup, the old and new libs could live together as long as the
same Ubuntu release is used.

I don't know tracker. For some software there's no need to care about
such issues. I simply build a single package for Claws using
checkinstall. Checkinstall provides a menu to edit all the information,
but I don't edit everything, I only edit it this way:

[root at moonstudio src]# grep -v \# claws.configure | grep sudo -A16
sudo checkinstall
----

0 -  Maintainer: [ Weremouse <silver.bullet at zoho.com> ]
1 -  Summary: [ A GTK+ based e-mail client - git checkout ]
2 -  Name:    [ claws-mail-git ]
3 -  Version: [ 3.15.0-20-g1d4d90 ]
4 -  Release: [ 1 ]
5 -  License: [ GPL3 ]
6 -  Group:   [ checkinstall ]
7 -  Architecture: [ amd64 ]
8 -  Source location: [ claws ]
9 -  Alternate source location: [  ]
10 - Requires: [  ]
11 - Provides: [ claws-mail ]
12 - Conflicts: [  ]
13 - Replaces: [  ]

This works worriless for Claws, but for Evolution it even wouldn't work
worriless, when building Evolution packages the Debian/Ubuntu way, as
soon as Evolution from git requires a different GNOME/GTK
environment, than provided by the official Ubuntu repositories.

Regards,
Ralf

-- 
The Turkish constitutional referendum is completed. I couldn't find the
result in the Internet, but even while the new German DVB-T2 doesn't
work correctly, I at least heard that 51% voted for "yes". What next? A
civil war? Just 51% voted for yes, despite ballot rigging, despite
oppression against opposition. This pseudo-majority pro Erdoğan is a
clear vote against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This is the end of his career
and IMO European governments should only talk with the Turkish
opposition and The International Court of Justice should already
prepare a lawsuit against tyrant Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.