I'm attempting to add freetype support to libgd for debian buster. What's the best way to replace or add a recompiled library in debian? I can figure out the specifics, but I do not yet understand "The Debian Way".
---- I've used the Scientific Linux variant of RedHat/CentOS Long Term Support for many years, but now both are going away. All that is going away due to BHMR (Butt Headed Management Reversals), so I am attempting a transition to Debian Buster, rebuilding shell scripts, and recompiling many C language point tools I've built over the decades. I've built hundreds of "engineering animations" using libgd to make png frames, then combined them into flash animations and displayed those with firefox. I labelled the animations with truetype fonts. All that Just Worked, mostly because many in the Scientific Linux community did the same things. And now it Doesn't Just Work. The SL community is scattering to the winds ... some to $$$ Enterprise, some to Alma Linux, some to Debian, and a few (including some small engineering businesses disturbingly like mine) to involuntary shutdown. SL supported international collaborations that perform big experiments at the Large Hadron Collider and LIGO and on ISS, so this may impact science productivity for years - and my productivity for many months. ---- The good news is that I have learned how to make animated PNGs with "apngasm", and that works better than SWF. That also simplifies the web pages in which I imbed the animations, so this part of the transition is going well. But I'm tearing my hair out trying to understand and work with all the variations of libgd. The builtin fonts for libgd look like 1980's video game crap. I've added the packages for truetype fonts, but libgd doesn't find them. Stock debian buster libgd (2.2.5-5.2) complains "libgd was not built with freetype font support" ... /if/ I add the package that converts return codes into error strings. "bullseye" and "sid" use libgd 2.3.0-2 ... also not built with freetype font support. That version of libgd also seems to be called libgd3, which is confusing. It seems like the best way forwards is to recompile libgd with freetype font support enabled, then replace the system's libgd library ... but I don't know the right way to do that, and my clumsy efforts could break other tools and screw up updates and upgrades. So ... how do Debian Cool Kids recompile and upgrade commonly used system libraries like libgd? Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected]
