GIMP Version: 2.8.5
Operating System: Linux
OS Version: Mint 13
GIMP Experience: Advanced Level

---

Hello gimpchat people, sorry for being absent for so long, been doing things and stuff, you know how it is. Anyway:

So, the problem seems to be, that GEGL now requires a newer version of GLib than what is in the Ubuntu/Mint LTS repos. I tried both the master and 0.2 branch of GEGL, both seem to have the same dependency requirement. And GIMP 2.8 requires GEGL 0.2 so I can't go older than 0.2.

I don't want to update to a non-LTS release, because I don't really enjoy constantly updating my computer/OS - I have better things to do with it, so the next version I'll update to must also be an LTS which won't be released until next April.

So, I would need to update GLib, and I can probably download the package from a later Ubuntu-version's repository if I do it manually via the web, but then there's the problem of dependencies... libc would need to be updated as well, and this whole thing is starting to cascade into something that looks like it can potentially brick my system if I attempt it...

What to do? I remember being able to compile GEGL earlier this year, so the GLib requirement must be a new one. Maybe there's a version of GEGL that accepts an older GLib but which is still accepted by the latest stable GIMP? Is it simply impossible for me to compile GIMP on a LTS system now? Or do I have to risk it and update a bunch of important system packages, with no idea how it'll affect the overall system?

Please advise.

If you have the hard disk space available, you might consider installing QEMU or VirtualBox on your LTS; then installing a newer release of Mint as a virtualized guest.

Not really an option... I need to be able to run GIMP natively.

I am sincerely interested in learning why virtualization is not an option.

Well I guess it sort of is an "option", but it's not something I want to do. There's always a performance penalty in virtualization, memory usage goes up a lot, and I don't want that. I should be able to get GIMP running natively on my Linux box.

Eh, I was just wondering if there was any other option rather than updating a whole bunch of system packages, but if the only alternative is virtualization, I guess I'll start looking into getting those packages updated. Thanks anyway.

Don't know if this will be much help but Petra Mint 16 backports are now available for Mint 13 http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2524

Nope the backports only include Mint's own packages, ie. Cinnamon, mdm and stuff.

The problem of the LTS release it that Long Term Support also means Long Term Obsolescence. Your installed software gets more or less frozen (bar security fixes) to some months before your distro went public, while application code moves forward. I used to be on a Ubuntu LTS, the last year was tough, the recent versions of many useful software wouldn't run... If you want to run reasonably leading edge software you have to upgrade regularly...

Because you wouldn't want to have to boot a Linux just to use Gimp?

I'm aware of the implications of running a LTS distro... however, I don't usually need many up-to-date applications, only a few of them... and most seem to install nicely, sometimes a bit of fiddling is needed, but so far, GIMP has been the only software that I've been unable to compile from source.

In fact, I've learned that there are ppa's that package the latest version of GIMP. So it's not like I couldn't get the latest version of GIMP to run here if it really becomes an issue to do so. I'm a bit hesitant to use the ppa though, because the code is obviously patched downstream in some ways to make it accept older versions of libraries (glib and libc mainly). And I'd like to know how exactly is this done and is it likely to introduce some new bugs or regressions, but I can't find that information anywhere... the other reason is, of course, that compiling your own binaries gives the advantage of a slight performance boost, as the code can be compiled to suit your particular setup (-march=native and all that). I don't think the difference is that big tbh, but hey, there are worse things to obsess over, I guess

Anyway, it's not like I'm out of options here, it's not an emergency or anything, my GIMP still works and all... I was just looking for insight, on the off chance that maybe someone else here had ran to the same problem, and maybe figured out a way to bypass it... for example, maybe someone could point out the exact commit in the gegl git tree when the glib version requirement was upped, so I wouldn't have to hunt for it myself... (assuming of course that that version of gegl works for the latest version of GIMP, I think it should as the version requirement seems relatively recent)

I might just wait out until Mint 17 is released, so the problem would solve itself. Or by then I might look into other options, Tanglu looks quite promising but is still a bit too immature, solydxk has been suggested by some smart guys as a reasonable option as well, but I'm not totally sold on the rolling-release model yet...

Just as a future reference, in case anyone else struggles with this - I ended up solving this issue by installing a patched GEGL from a PPA, then compiling GIMP from the source - which worked fine.

The PPA I used was this: https://launchpad.net/~otto-kesselgulasch/+archive/gimp

Source I got from git.