Re: how to do science with amd64 lenny

[Dimitris Lampridis <dlampridis@gmail.com>]

On Thursday 17 June 2010 19:04:24 Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 06:05:05PM +0200, Francesco Pietra wrote:
> > Hello:
> > For computational chemistry on the stable amd64 I needed yesterday
> > MPICH2. As the deb package is only in testing, I compiled MPICH2 for
> > stable, but the parallelized program needs python2.6, only available
> > in testing. I doubt I am able enough to compile python.
> > 
> > I can't move to testing because I am not allowed to do that not only
> > for the risk of testing distributions for computational work but also
> > because older key computational package do not run on testing.
> > 
> > Question: would installing python2.6 on lenny from unstable be safe
> > enough by using apt-pinning? I have no system expert here. I would be
> > responsible for damage to the software.
> > 
> I just got the source package and did:
> 
> dpkg-source -x mpich2_1.2.1.1-4.dsc
> cd mpich2-1.2.1.1
> dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -D
> apt-get install <list of whatever packages the above said was missing for
> building dependancies> dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b
> cd ..
> dpkg -i *1.2.1.1-4*deb
> 

I was about to suggest something similar:

1) Add the deb-src for debian testing in your sources.list
2) apt-get update
3) apt-get source mpich2
4) apt-get build-dep mpich2
5) cd mpich2-1.2.1.1 (or whatever the name of the created folder)
6) dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us
7) cd ..
8) dpkg -i *.deb

So you first add the source packages of debian testing, you update, you pull 
the source package of mpich2, then you pull all the required packages to build 
mpich2, and finally you build it. If all goes well, the deb packages will be 
produced in the parent folder.

There is one catch: in the 4th step, where you pull the build dependencies, it 
could be that you are missing something in the stable distribution. In that 
case, you have to "pause" the mpich2 build process, and first do the same 
trick for any missing packages.

So, if you are missing some "X" build dependency, then you should first pull 
the source of "X", its build dependencies, build it, install it and then try 
again the build-dep command, until it does not complain about anything 
missing.

Cheers,
Dimitris