[CentOS] How to encourage maintainers to update their software

Sat Oct 28 22:42:07 UTC 2017
Frank Cox <theatre at sasktel.net>

On Sat, 28 Oct 2017 17:15:01 -0400
H wrote:

> The graphical configuration utility for fcitx (fcitx-configtool) is missing 

I don't know anything about Chinese text rendering.

> - The geany editor is missing the markdown plugin, this however, may shortly
> be resolved.

Check on my website. :)

The rest of your stuff is easily dealt with by compiling the relevant Fedora rpms.

> I'd love to have keepassx updated

Download this:

ftp://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/fedora/linux/releases/25/Everything/source/tree/Packages/k/keepassx-2.0.3-1.fc25.src.rpm

and you can have this:

keepassx-2.0.3-1.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm

I just tried it and it took only a few minutes.

> - pdfshuffler is not available for CentOS 7, only CentOS 6.

I just compiled this

ftp://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/fedora/linux/releases/25/Everything/source/tree/Packages/p/pdfshuffler-0.6.0-9.fc25.src.rpm

It took about three seconds to do the whole job and now I have this:

pdfshuffler-0.6.0-9.el7.centos.noarch.rpm

You can easily do the same if you wish.  Just install rpmdevtools and any necessary dependencies for the rpm that you want to compile and  off you go.  The rpmbuild command will even tell you about any missing dependencies.  For example, my first attempt at compiling keepassx told me:

error: Failed build dependencies:
	libXtst-devel is needed by keepassx-1:2.0.3-1.el7.centos.x86_64
	libgcrypt-devel is needed by keepassx-1:2.0.3-1.el7.centos.x86_64

To fix it I did this:

yum install libXtst-devel libgcrypt-devel

My next attempt to compile the keepassx rpm worked.

This isn't a guaranteed solution for absolutely every rpm or program that you might ever come across; sometimes you get into a dependency rabbit hole that never seems to end and it becomes more work than it's worth to solve.  Other times you get stuff that requires a newer or different version of something that's way too much work to upgrade or change.  But in a lot of cases, you can just download and compile your own rpm as needed.  As you see here, two items on your wish list are easily handled this way in less than five minutes.  It took me longer to write this email than it did to download and compile those programs.


-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Real D 3D Digital Cinema ~ www.melvilletheatre.com