[Scribus] Scribus crashes

[Craig Ringer]

On Wed, 2004-12-15 at 09:09, Andy Steinhauf wrote:
> Hello Craig !
> 
> > >> > i've updated freetype2 to 2.1.9 (self compiled). After this update
> > > Scribus crashes every time at startup (short after displaying "searching
> > > fonts"). I recompiled it, i've deleted the .scribus directory in my home
> > > directory... it crashes. Has someone the same experience ?
> > Nope, but I have a few guesses. The first and foremost is the
> > possibility that you compiled against the newer headers, but the app is
> > being linked against the older library at runtime (or vice versa).
> I've checked it and found an old freetype-devel package. I'v uninstalled it 
> and reinstalled my selfcompiled rpm package.

Aah. If you upgrade freetype, it can be a /really/ good idea to install
your new version somewhere where you can control what uses it. I use
${HOME}/libs/freetype-${VERSION} but /usr/local/freetype or whatever
does the trick too.

That way it's much clearer where it's going and what is using it. Doing
things that way also avoids nasties with apps linking against the wrong
library versions (in theory, the soname should be incremented with
incompatible changes. In reality, sometimes it isn't.)

Try removing your home-made package, installing freetype somewhere else,
then ./configure and compile Scribus after:

export PATH=${FREETYPE_DIR}/bin:${PATH}
export LIBRARY_PATH=${FREETYPE_DIR}/lib:${LIBRARY_PATH}
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${FREETYPE_DIR}/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
export CPATH=${FREETYPE_DIR}/include:${CPATH}

and see if you have any more luck doing things that way. Remember that
upgrading core libraries like freetype is tricky, because other things -
like Qt, which Scribus uses - also link against it. If you link them to
a different version at runtime to what they were compiled against, they
/should/ work if the library author did their job ... but weird problems
are not unknown. If you end up linking BOTH the old and new versions of
the library (because Scribus links the new one, but Qt links the old
one, for example) things can go splat as globals get initialized twice,
etc.

I upgrade freetype, libxml, and some other libraries here, but I then
compile my own copy of KDE using Konstruct, including a new copy of Qt,
with the new libraries. None of my changes touch the system libraries,
they're all private to my user account. It works well, but in general it
won't be worth the effort for most folks.

--
Craig Ringer