When packages does not compile...

[Karl-Franz]

Noob question:

I recently felt limited by portage and wanted to try my own wings, compiling packages on my own. Almost half the packages won't compile for all different reasons.
My troubleshooting is limited to reading the output and looking for libs that's not installed. This seldom helps. What else can I do? Is there some tricks to make it work?

/KF

[PRC]

Dependencies were the most difficult part of linux for me when I started using linux. I agree with you that portage, on some circumstances does limit somethings. If you decide to install packages independent of portage, try to read documentation, and see what dependencies you need to install. i usually end up installing dependencies through portage.

[rhill]

i would stick with portage and slowly work towards building things yourself until you get comfortable enough with the way things work that you can start to identify and solve whatever problems you run into. it can be very overwhelming to try and learn everything at once.

you might also want to look at the Linux from Scratch project. it'll give you a better idea of the fundamental low-level stuff that goes on under the hood, while still staying flexible and relatively stable. it's a lot of work to get through, but not that much more than a typical gentoo install.
_________________
by design, by neglect
for a fact or just for effect