For many months I have been using snapshots from the master branch, via PPA from the OBS, for testing on my ‘evaluate’ system, using Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 with no issues. I have been getting regular updates to dt. However, for the past few weeks my install has not been updated. I tried grabbing a deb binary directly (darktable_4.3.0~git1939.8eb9ad90-1+9828.1_amd64.deb), but gdebi package installer will not install it - it reports "Error: Dependency is not satisfiable libc6 (>=2.35).
Actually, it hasn’t seemed like that since I started playing with a master branch version about the time 3.9 became available. I have had not one single problem with it; the current issue is, I guess, because I’m choosing to use LMDE5 rather than Debian Testing.
Wishing to understand this scenario better and being intrigued by it, I am returning to your earlier advice (without wishing to irritate):
As I said, for some months I had been getting updates to master branch snapshots, using the PPA from the OBS. I haven’t the addressing implicit in that PPA, but now I don’t get updates and the snapshots I can grab cannot be installed on my LMDE 5 system. The only change that I can see is that now I can grab a package only from Debian Testing whereas previously (I think) I was getting packages from Debian 11.
Is this correct? If so, why was this change necessary? Does it mean that anybody running LMDE 5 is unable to run a master branch snapshot of darktable? Or is there some work-around that I could use ?
You basically answered yor question in your first post:
Are you trying to use a package build for one distribution on another distribution (a package for Debian 11 or Debian Testing used on LMDE5)?
If that’s the case, you are out of luck when it suddenly stops working… Or rather, you were lucky that it worked for a while.
A LTS (Long term support) version of a distro will not update system libraries unless really forced to. But newer versions can use newer library versions(*), and if you try to use a program build for such a newer version, your package manager will refuse to install the program (to avoid crashes and other problems).
(*: possible reasons: new functionality, like new standards to support, incompatible bug resolutions, …)
This is not a darktable problem, but you using incompatible packages. This will not be, and cannot be solved by maintainers, who (have to) build for one or more specific distros.
If you still want to use master branch snapshots, you can compile them yourself, as the issue is most likely not the darktable surce code.
Darktable 4.0 was released in July 2022; darktable 3.9 was the development version that eventually became 4.0. It is no wonder that LMDE 5 had no compatibility problems: they were ‘contemporaries’.
Linux distros provide great package management systems and ship packages that are tested to be compatible with each other. Forcing some alien package into that system may work, or it may not, and can lead to hard-to-solve problems. You may be better off with non-LTS distros, if you want to continue using development versions of software. Ubuntu, also being a Debian-based distro, is a logical, but not the inly, choice. They support various desktop environments, including Cinnamon.
So sorry to raise this topic again, but I need help. After a hiatus caused by a personal tradegy I finally found time to plan the replacement of LMDE5 with Debian Testing - only to discover a Catch-22. This is shown in the attached screen shot (which I hope I will be able to attach). Debian tells me that to download the ‘testing’ version of Bullseye I must visit the ‘releases’ page of the web-site. Here I find that the current “testing” distribution is trixie. Further down the page it tells me that " The next release of Debian is codenamed trixie — testing — no release date has been set" and there appears to be no way to download the ‘Testing’ version.
My understanding, from what I have been advised in this topic, is that I have to use a ‘testing’ distribution of Debian if I want to run a master branch snapshot (which is exactly what I want). Assuming that the version level doesn’t matter, then I should be able to use the ‘Testing’ version of Bullseye - in fact I have no choice, since the testing version of Bookworm, which is apparently called ‘trixie’, is not yet available. But I can find no way of accessing a testing version of Bullseye - presumably because it is now deleted following the availability of Bookworm.
This begs the question of what release/version of Debian Testing is being used to build the master (i.e. unstable) branch of dt. Surely it has to be Bullseye, as Trixie is not yet available?
I think you didn’t quite grasp the organisation of the different versions for Debian. In a nutshell:
the version you seem to have installed is called Bullseye, which is not the newest stable version;
the latest stable version is Bookworm;
the next stable version (which is not yet released) will be called Trixie.
The “Testing” version is always the intermediate between the current stable release (in this case Bookworm) and the next stable release. It’s not deleted, it becomes the next stable release. So there is always only one “Testing” version, the latest.
Also, the reason you need to use “Testing” to build dt master is that you need the newest librarie versions. So it makes no sense to use a (hypothetical) Testing version older than the current stable version…
Before you install “Testing”, (available from the Debian installers page) make sure you know the potential problems involved. It can have bugs you wouldn’t expect in a stable versions (the same as with dt’s snapshots).And of course, installing the “Testing” version wipes out the Bullseye install (not your user data, if you set it up correctly)…
Wouldn’t Ubuntu (also Debian-based) with Cinnamon (so it’s like your Mint desktop), updated every 6 months, so you always have a fresh set of libraries, be a good choice?
