Re: [Pan-users] Stupid question

[Duncan]

Ron Johnson posted on Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:04:58 -0500 as excerpted:

> $ git clone git://github.com/judgefudge/pan2

@ Ron J:

Umm...

You just told someone running Ubuntu, who asked how to install an 
official release version, to install not the official gnome git version, 
not even the official khaley/lostcoder pan upstream on github, but a 
rather bleeding edge experimental version by someone else in the 
community.

This despite NO indication at all that the user even WANTS anything other 
than official stable, and WITHOUT any warning of ANY kind that he's not 
getting official stable.

Now he may indeed want the latest and the greatest leading edge 
experimental version.  I run it.  Others here run it.  There are lots of 
really very nice but still experimental features in it that aren't in the 
official version.

But PLEASE, recognize that you DO have a responsibility to SOME sort of 
truth in advertising, and at LEAST tell people what you're suggesting 
they use and why, if you're going to suggest anything other than the 
official tarballs and/or distro versions.

@ Evan M:

Thanks for asking.  I don't run Ubuntu myself (I'm a Gentooer) so may not 
be as helpful on the distro-specific details as some.  However, here's 
your choices.

1.  Distro or distro-upstream (Debian, for you) package.  I don't know 
what version Ubuntu ships, but 10.04 was likely still 0.133.  However, 
it's likely that one or more of the other Debian based distros have 
either 0.134 or 0.135.  That will probably be easiest for you as it 
should integrate with your package management system and therefore 
automate some of the dependency issues, etc, that you might otherwise 
have.

2.  Official version sources, either the tarball, or from the official 
gnome git repo.  The following page gives some general help:

http://pan.rebelbase.com/download/

Specifically, note the requirements for the gtk2 and gmime header files, 
packaged as gtk2-devel and gmime-devel on most binary distros.  Also, 
gnome-common, tho I'm not sure if the tarball requires it or not, but if 
you do the git version, you'll certainly need it as it contains a 
component referenced by the ./autogen.sh mentioned on the above page.

In general, binary distros split most upstream libraries packages in 
half, into a runtime package containing the library binary and anything 
else needed to run pre-built apps that link to it, and a -devel package 
containing the header files and other data necessary if you're going to 
build packages depending on that library from sources.  So any time you 
build a package from source, expect that even if you already have the 
necessary libraries installed, you'll probably still need to install the 
-devel packages for them, so the build process can build and link against 
them.

3.  Official community upstream development git repo, by khaley, aka 
lostcoder, on github.  (This is also mentioned on the download page 
linked above.)

Pan's development process is a bit complicated.  Essentially, the job of 
lead developer is split in half between two people, neither one of which 
is interested in doing the whole thing.  K Haley is the community lead 
developer, who actually merges patches, both his own and those submitted 
by others, into the code as originally inherited from pan's previous lead 
developer, Charles Kerr.  But KHaley for whatever reason hasn't expressed 
any interest at all in doing the upstream gnome thing.  Petr Kovar, 
meanwhile, was already a gnome translator and general documentation guy, 
thus already had gnome access, when he joined the pan team, but he 
doesn't really do any coding.  But put the two together (along with me as 
the senior list regular; I'm not a coder either and otherwise tend more 
toward kde than gnome, but I've been interested in pan and on the pan 
lists for nearing a decade now, with my contribution generally being 
longer detail posts such as this) and you have a working team. =:^)

So PKovar basically takes KHaley's code with very little changes of his 
own, and lands it in the official gnome repo.  Thus, khaley's lostcoder 
github repo is the community upstream and very close to what the gnome 
repo gets, which in turn ultimately gets rolled into an official release 
tarball.

The khaley git URL is mentioned on that download page.  You can run 
either the main/master branch, or if you want something a bit more edgy, 
consider the testing branch.  But khaley is still quite conservative, so 
even his testing branch is pretty safe.

4,5. Community alternative repos.  There are actually a couple of these, 
both on github.

4.  JLynch (aexoden on github) has had some patches merged into khaley's 
repo but doesn't seem to read this list, so I don't believe many here 
know much about his goals with this repo.  I just know about it from 
looking on github for people with a pan2 repo.

5.  Heinrich Mueller, aka judgefudge on github (former github ID 
imhotep82), is by contrast QUITE active and responsive on this list, and 
his repo is where most of the new and exciting activity seems to be 
taking place.  He has implemented quite a number of new features in his 
repo including binary attachment uploading (planned for a decade or more 
but never actually implemented until months ago; it's still somewhat 
experimental, but works), automatic actions based on score (delete and 
mark-read, intended for ignored/negative scores, cache or download-and-
save, intended for high scores, again, this has been heavily requested 
for years but only very recently implemented by hmueller, and the feature 
remains somewhat experimental), and some minor ones, plus a few bug fixes 
that haven't made it into the official version yet, AFAIK.

Of course, the git link and brief instructions Ron J provided was to this 
repo.  As I've explained, he's quite active and responsive on this list 
(which I read thru gmane.org as a newsgroup, BTW) and that's where the 
exciting new activity seems to be happening, so it's a very good choice 
if you want the latest experimental features and is what many list 
regulars use now, but if you're a bit more conservative, you may well 
prefer either khaley's recognized upstream version, or may even prefer 
sticking with either official gnome git or the release tarballs, and it's 
your machine and your choice, so don't be afraid to assert it, based on 
what you're most comfortable with. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman