I really hate installing software outside of the package manager, because that is not the way of a stable system. Xstow helps the agony those times that sourceball installations are necessary (e.g for new features). Here’s how to install imagemagick with xstow. If you haven’t installed xstow yet, then follow the relevant instructions in this snippet

   1  sudo apt-get install libmagick9-dev # needed for sane image support
   2  cd /tmp
   3  wget ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/multimedia/graphics/ImageMagick/ImageMagick-6.4.2-7.tar.bz2
   4  tar xjvf ImageMagick-6.4.2-7.tar.bz2
   5  sudo mv ImageMagick-6.4.2 /usr/src
   6  cd /usr/src
   7  sudo ln -s ImageMagick-6.4.2 imagemagick
   8  cd imagemagick
   9  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/imagemagick
  10  make
  11  sudo make install
  12  cd /usr/local/stow
  13  sudo xstow imagemagick

I was unable to make screencasts in wmii using Istanbul. So here’s how I installed xvidcap. Unfortunately I cannot come up with a way for wget retrieval of the sourceball, so some manual labour is needed. Retrieve the sourceball and put it in /tmp. Then follow the instructions below. Also see the snippet for an alias for the make command first.

Note that I put the binaries in /usr/local/stow/xvidcap because the package comes from outside package management. I then use xstow to manage the symlinks in /usr/local/bin.

   1  sudo apt-get install libxml-parser-perl libxmu-dev libglade2-dev libgtk2.0-dev
   2  cd /tmp
   3  tar zxvf xvidcap*.tar.gz
   4  cd xvidcap*
   5  ./configure --prefix /usr/local/stow/xvidcap
   6  make
   7  sudo make install
   8  cd /usr/local/stow
   9  sudo xstow xvidcap

To remove xvidcap follow these steps

   1  cd /usr/local/xstow
   2  xstow -D xvidcap
   3  sudo rm -rf /usr/local/stow/xvidcap

Although Git is one of the better source code managers it has a major drawback if you need to install it from the sources – it’s makefile doesn’t have an uninstall target as defined in the GNU coding standards. Therefore you might find your system screwed over when you want to uninstall or upgrade after installing from sources. This is a workaround that is sufficient enough to make me break my rule of not installing software outside of package management.

Also see the snippet for an alias for the make command first.

Prequisities

   1  sudo apt-get install asciidoc xsltproc xmlto xstow bzip2 build-essential zlib1g-dev tcl8.4

Installation

   1  cd /tmp
   2  wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.5.5.1.tar.bz2
   3  tar xjvf git-1.5.5.1.tar.bz2
   4  sudo mv git-1.5.5.1 /usr/src
   5  sudo ln -s /usr/src/git-1.5.5.1 /usr/src/git
   6  cd /usr/src/git
   7  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/git
   8  make all doc
   9  sudo make install install-doc
  10  cd /usr/local/stow
  11  cat << EOF > /tmp/xstow.ini
  12  # this is the xtow configuration file
  13  # see xstow.ini(5) for details
  14  
  15  # list of links that will be handled as normal directories
  16  [traverse-links] 
  17  keep-targets = true      # add targets of the links to the keep-dirs section
  18  link = /usr/local/tmp
  19  link = /usr/local/var
  20  link = /usr/local/man
  21  link = /usr/local/share
  22  link = /usr/local/share/man
  23  link = /usr/local/doc
  24  link = /usr/local/info
  25  add-if-target = /*       # automatic add all absolute links
  26  
  27  # directories that never should be removed
  28  [keep-dirs]
  29  dir = /usr/local/bin
  30  dir = /usr/local/sbin
  31  dir = /usr/local/lib
  32  dir = /usr/local/include
  33  dir = /usr/local/share
  34  
  35  [matches]
  36  ignore = *~      # emacs
  37  ignore = core    # core file
  38  ignore = core.*  # new style
  39  ignore = CVS     # CVS directories
  40  ignore-regex = [0]+README.*
  41  
  42  # make other stow dirs public
  43  [stow-dirs]
  44  dir = /usr/local/local/stow
  45  dir = /usr/local/local/stow2
  46  
  47  [debug]
  48  module = ALL
  49  level  = 0
  50  
  51  [config-files]
  52  in-home = yes
  53  in-stow-dir = yes
  54  in-other-stow-dirs = yes
  55  file = /etc/xstow.ini
  56  file = /usr/local/local/etc/xstow.ini
  57  
  58  [links]
  59  absolute-paths = false
  60  EOF
  61  sudo mv -i /tmp/xstow.ini .
  62  sudo xstow git

Uninstallation

   1  cd /usr/local/xstow
   2  xstow -D git
   3  sudo rm -rf /usr/local/stow/git

Kind of makes one appreciate the work done by package maintainers, doesn’t it?