pebkac thoughts

Mutt 1.5.18-1 just came out recently, and the news just hit google reader, so I decided to build it. Why am I going with the debian package and not with the source straight from the mutt website? Two reasons. The first is that I run Ubuntu, so the build process is the same as with debian and the process is easier and more familiar than whatever various projects may want me to do for their particular build. The second is that the kind debian folks have a “mutt-patched” that rolls in the sidebar and other patches that many people (including myself)  find very handy.

Let’s get to building! Note that I’m assuming you’re on an Ubuntu Hardy Heron system here. I tried this build on a gutsy system and pbuilder choked. Step 1: backups. Back up your muttrc, local mail, kitchen sink, etc. Step 2: download the .dsc, .orig, and .diff files from the qa website linked to earlier and put them in a directory for this build, say “muttbuild” or similar:

cmpalmer@kant:~/muttbuild$ wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/m/mutt/mutt_1.5.18-1.dsc
cmpalmer@kant:~/muttbuild$ wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/m/mutt/mutt_1.5.18.orig.tar.gz
cmpalmer@kant:~/muttbuild$ wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/m/mutt/mutt_1.5.18-1.diff.gz

And unpack the “orig” one:

cmpalmer@kant:~/muttbuild$ tar -xzvf mutt_1.5.18.orig.tar.gz

Now you should be ready to use pbuilder to build it. If you’ve never used pbuilder before, have a look at the Ubuntu wikipage on using pbuilder. If my target distro is gutsy, for example, I’d have to change a line in /etc/pbuilderrc (or my own personal pbuilderrc). Once all that is squared away, let’s update to apply any changes to the rc:

cmpalmer@kant:~/muttbuild$ sudo pbuilder –update

And now we can let fly with the build:

cmpalmer@kant:~/muttbuild$ sudo pbuilder –build *.dsc

Did you get errors? Leave me comments. If not, you should find your .deb files in /var/cache/pbuilder/result (unless you changed the output directory in the rc file) and you can move them to your target machine for install. I built this version of mutt for gutsy and the install on the gutsy box failed dependencies for libgnutls and libncurses. I’ll have to either update the gutsy box or poke at this more. Both will have to wait.