Re: Removing bundled LilyPond

[Alexander Kobel]

notesetter wrote:
> [...]
> 1) Install 2.11.59 via shell script and alter my system so that the command
> 'lilypond' points to the new installation in my home directory.
Usually it is sufficient to rename the old executable and point a
symbolic link to the new one; say you installed the recent version in
/home/johndoe/bin/lilypond/, and the default choice is in /usr/bin/,
then you have do
        mv /usr/bin/lilypond /usr/bin/lilypond-2.10.33
        ln -s /home/johndoe/bin/lilypond/lilypond /usr/bin/lilypond
and every invocation of what was known as /usr/bin/lilypond is
redirected to use the new application.
However, this assumes you can write on /usr/bin/. Since you seem to be
talking about your own machine, this won't be a problem, otherwise the
only advisable way is altering the default path settings for your
environment to check /home/johndoe/bin/lilypond/ first. The way for this
depends on your favorite shell and/or editor, and the settings will
apply to this environment only. (This is Graham's solution posted a few
minutes ago. Anyway, this may help with other applications, too.)

On the other hand, I'm not absolutely sure whether lilypond requires
additional paths for, say, scheme scripts or other input files to be
set; it's been a while since I did that last time on a linux box. In
this case, Graham's approach is the Good Thing to do.


> Also, someone on the Ubuntu Studio user list mentioned making a .deb package
> for LilyPond that would presumably solve this problem. I've also asked about
> that in the past on this forum. It would be convenient if one could install
> LilyPond through a package manager like a lot of other Debian/Ubuntu
> applications. If I have the time (and I think I do), I would be willing to
> learn to do this work myself, provided it's within my limited (but hopefully
> expaning) scope. I would probably only commit to making a package for stable
> releases though.
Actually, 2.10.33 /is/ the recent stable release, so your Ubuntu is
perfectly up to date. For Debian (Maybe Ubuntu too? Never bothered)
there is a testing repository, where prerelease versions can be found
and installed via the package managers.
Anyway, packaging is not an easy process in general; you have to check
back several dependencies and possible complications with other packages
and system settings. A recent thread showed that the LilyPond people are
not even absolutely clear on whether it actually needs a LaTeX
distribution or not...
And since to don't even have to compile from source, I guess you can
calmly use the installer and leave packaging to the maintainers of the
distributions for a while.


Cheers,
Alexander