installing mindless automation

[Zerro]

Hi

I'm trying to install mindless, while running the latest knoppix off cd. I'm used to just apt-getting whatever I need, but mindless isn't in debian. I'm pretty lost without apt-get.

-I downloaded what I think is the right file
-I decompressed it
-moved to the new directory
-typed "make"

Make put out a very long error. I don't know if this is the problem but it said something about gtk+-2.0 not being found in the path.

-Am I going about this all wrong?
-is this gtk business the problem?
-is there something I can apt-get to straighten out this gtk business?
-basically just how do you install mindless?

[JohnnyH]

Going to the Debian packages site
http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages
and putting
gtk+-2.0
in the Package Contents Search Box will tell you that you will get this in package
libgtk2.0-dev
So
apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev
then try make again.
Repeat the procedure if necessary for any other files subsequently requested by make

[Zerro]

Thanks for the speedy reply.

but when I try to apt-get libgtk2.0-dev:

-some packages could not be installed
-since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that the package is simply not installable
-the following packages have unmet dependencies
-E: Broken packages

Am I right in thinking this is because my knoppix disk (5.1.1) has fallen behind the debian archive and I'm basically boned until the next knoppix release which could be months away?

[JohnnyH]

Oops yes, I forgot to advise you to edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file.
Because Debian releases have moved on since Knoppix 5.1.1 came out, the meanings of stable testing unstable and so on have shifted.
I find that Knoppix 5.1.1 successfully installs or upgrades packages from what is now the 'stable' (designated 'etch') repository.
So it's safest to comment-out all URL statements for testing, unstable and experimental.
I also like to edit 'stable' to 'etch' , which is clearer and more future-proof for when Debian goes up to the next full release number.
Then do apt-get update again.
Ensure that there are no 'aborted' configuration files on the system by
dpkg --purge libgtk2.0-dev
and re-try
apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev
Good luck

[Zerro]

Thanks for the help. The last thing went off without a hitch; libgtk2.0-dev is installed and output from make is a lot more friendly. There is only one error and it created a bunch of .o files.

The Mindless User's Guide said to copy the executable "mindless" to a directory in my path, so I typed "echo $PATH" to find a directory. Then I copied "mindless.o" to /bin/. I tried both clicking on it and entering "mindless" or "mindless.o" from the prompt, nothing happened. Is this right and failing because of the error or am I doing it all wrong?

This is make's error:
failed to load "ICONS/lifeset.svg": Couldn't recognize the image file format for file 'ICONS/lifeset.svg'
make: *** [_images.c] Error 1

-is this something I have to deal with or can it be safely ignored?
-Is this something else my system is missing? That debian search had hundreds of results for 'svg'

Thanks for your patients.

[JohnnyH]

I'm afraid I don't know anything about mindless itself, but the make error seems to imply that the installation instructions may be omitting to tell you about some needed configuration in the host system. I hope that you can get a better informed answer from somebody else.

A good place to put mindless is /usr/bin/mindless which should already be in your path. Check that it is executable (it should have been generated as such).
Then try running mindless (or /usr/bin/mindless) in a User console so that you can see any error messages if e.g. the icon image problem were a show-stopper (it may not be).

[Zerro]

Thanks for your help, I found a workaround here, everything works and it seems I'm in the clear.