[Scribus] parallel ghostscript install

[Craig Ringer]

On Sat, 2004-10-23 at 00:33, Bart Alberti wrote:
> I am on SuSE 9.0 with gs at 7.07 (my Win doze has AFPL 8.14 BTW)
> it was explained here once before a while ago I think how to get 
> PARALLEL install of ghost script WITHOUT messing anything up. Advice, 
> please?

It's pretty easy when building gs from source.

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/gs831 --with-x
$ make
$ make so
$ sudo make install
$ sudo make soinstall

Specifying this prefix (adjust to taste and to match the gs version
you're installing) will install gs into a private directory tree. This
makes it easy to remove it later without disturbing anything else. It
also makes it easy to control whether or not to use it - use /usr/bin/gs
for the original version, or /usr/local/gs831/bin/gs for the new
version.

You can also set your PATH environment variable so the version in
/usr/local/gs831 is used by default. If /usr/local/gs831/bin is in the
PATH before /usr/bin, the new version gets used. If it's not in PATH or
listed after /usr/bin, the version in /usr/bin/ gets used. It works very
well.

For use with Scribus, you don't need to fiddle with the PATH - just
enter the full path to the new gs in the Scribus prefs. This won't do
any good if you need to use ps2pdf, however - you will want to set the
PATH. Let me warn you of one easy error now - if you have /usr/bin in
your PATH before /usr/local/gs831/bin and you run

$ /usr/local/gs831/bin/ps2pdf input.ps

you are likely to encounter all sorts of problems. This is because
ps2pdf is likely to use /usr/bin/gs - an older version that doesn't
understand all the same commands. Naturally, things don't work as
expected. The --with-gs=NAME option /may/ cause ps2pdf to pick the right
gs, but I haven't checked that - you're better off setting your PATH
anyway. If you're not sure how to set the PATH environment variable, I
advise you to have a look around linuxquestions.org . This query might
get you started:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alinuxquestions.org%20PATH&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

There is some information on installing GhostScript on
http://docs.scribus.net/ too:

http://docs.scribus.net/index.php?lang=en&sm=dtptoolbox&page=toolbox7

Note that -with-x should be --with-x . I've also heard reports of some
people having problems with --enable-compile-inits as shown on that
page, so if you have trouble re-run configure without that option.

--
Craig Ringer