[sane-devel] Howto update sane and xsane?

[Henning Meier-Geinitz]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 01:26:58AM +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
> I am running FC2 and want to upgrade xsane and sane-?ends to latest
> level, but being new to linux I am unsure of how I should do this. 
> 
> Since they exist as rpm installed packages should they then be removed
> from the system before installation or is it safe to let them stay and
> install the new levels on top of them? 

Maybe you can use the RPMs from
http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=sane-backends ?

Even if you can't, building your own RPM based on the 1.0.14 source
RPM is probably the cleanest way.

> The latest levels do not yet come in rpm format so I assume that if I
> let them stay then the up2date process may later catch up if an even
> newer level comes out in rpm format - or is this a false assumption?

If you do not want or can't make an RPM yourself there are some other
options:

1) Remove the existing SANE RPMs. You may get trouble trying this as
   other software may depend on them. You can try to force rpm to remove
   the packages that will break dependencies and you may get trouble
   later.
2) Overwrite the current installation. Linux distributions usually put
   their software into /usr, so "configure --prefix=/usr
   --sysconfdir=/etc" should work (check the syntax). This isn't a
   clean solution either and your sane installation may be destroyed
   when your distribution is updated.
3) Ignore the current installation and install SANE in /usr/local/.
   That's the default. It works but graphical frontends generally use
   the old installation in /usr, not the new one in /usr/local.
   /usr/local/bin/scanimage knows where to find the new libs, however.
   You can try some tricks to use the new libs, e.g. change the search
   order in /etc/ld.so.conf, use "LD_PRELOAD=/usr/local/lib/libcane.so
   xsane" or link /usr/lib/libsane.so to /usr/local/lib/libsane.so.

Bye,
  Henning