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How do I obtain the newest stable Debian package files?

sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/libgoocanvas3_1.0.0-1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/libgoocanvas-common_1.0.0-1_all.deb
sudo apt-get -f install

When I have to install Debian packages (see above) I first have to download them. Let me paste the entire links to these two packages:

libgoocanvas3

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/libgoocanvas3_1.0.0-1_amd64.deb

libgoocanvas-common

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/libgoocanvas-common_1.0.0-1_all.deb

As can be seen the two respective files are libgoocanvas3_1.0.0-1_amd64.deb and libgoocanvas-common_1.0.0-1_all.deb.

and now the questions

  • Do I need to use different Debian package versions dependent on my Ubuntu version?

  • How do I know these are the newest stable versions of each file (related to above)?

  • Where do I get the "official" latest and greatest files?

Display name
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    What is your Ubuntu version? What are you trying to achieve? – N0rbert Feb 24 '20 at 16:27
  • @N0rbert I'm on 18.04 but will be upgrading to 20.04 and need to know what to do to get latest/greatest. Your solution pretty much answers my question (newest stable Debian versions of packages may not be the versions linked in whatever instruction set I'm looking at). Using a version of your link https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/allpackages I can't seem to find libgoocanvas3 or libgoocanvas-common. Here are variants listed; libgoocanvas, libgoocanvas-2.0-common, libgoocanvas-2.0-dev, ibgoocanvas2-perl, libgoocanvasmm, libgoocanvasmm-2.0-dev, libgoocanvasmm-2.0-doc. Can u expand u answer? – Display name Feb 24 '20 at 17:03
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    I updated my answer. But the real solution depends on your final result. What code do you plan to compile? – N0rbert Feb 24 '20 at 17:14
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    is there a particular need for the latest packages? ie. are there any specific feature updates that you can't do without? The "latest" is not the "greatest" especially in context of using an LTS release: software goes through rigorous testing before being available as an update in apt. Inadvertently, you would be installing software that is not as stable. Also, manually installing packages with dpkg can be a recipe for dependency issues and conflicts. Best to stick with apt or the GUI package manager unless you absolutely must have a specific version. – Nmath Feb 25 '20 at 21:33
  • @Nmath is it OK to install these via Synaptic? The issue is I'll sometime be reading instructions that are a decade old on how to install certain Debian packages. And then I wonder if I should really be using these old versions of Debian packages on my current Ubuntu LTS. It seems "it depends" on whether it's better to use older packages or newer packages, based on a thousand different variables. I'm not experienced enough in Linux to always distinguish when I should or shouldn't use the old vs the new. – Display name Feb 25 '20 at 22:42
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    Synaptic is the GUI front-end for apt so using Synaptic in effect is the same thing as installing software using command line apt or apt-get -- my advice is to use the package currently supported by the distro, unless it's not possible to complete your tasks without manually installing older/newer version. This should be fairly rare. It seems from what others have mentioned that the package/library you were looking to install was an older version, so it's very likely that the current version supports everything that was supported in the older. – Nmath Feb 25 '20 at 23:30

2 Answers2

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You have to use Search package directories on the special web site - https://packages.ubuntu.com .

For your case - https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=all&searchon=names&keywords=libgoocanvas will show all libgoocanvas packages for all currently supported Ubuntu releases.

The libgoocanvas3 was available only in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. On newer systems you will get libgoocanvas-2.0-9 at version 2.0.4.

From developer's point of view for goocanvas*-dev you will get the following:

  • libgoocanvas3 provides goocanvas.pc for pkgconfig
  • libgoocanvas-2.0-dev provides goocanvas-2.0.pc for pkgconfig

For the particular problem with Shutter on upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - you will not be able to download and install it in simple way because of missed libgnome2-* packages.

N0rbert
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  • Ultimately I'm following the instructions to get the Edit button working on the Shutter (screen capture) program. When I upgrade to 20.04 do I download the newer versions of libgoocanvas? or stick with the libgoocanvas3 that works on 18.04 (but yields a "system error detected" error when I boot)? https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029085/how-to-enable-the-edit-button-in-shutter – Display name Feb 24 '20 at 19:22
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    The official repository has shutter only for 18.04 LTS. So I would recommend to stay on 18.04 LTS as you have working solution for it. – N0rbert Feb 24 '20 at 19:36
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There is no "latest" libgoocanvas3 and libgoocanvas-common.

Those packages were dropped from both Debian and Ubuntu in early 2018. Nobody is making those packages anymore.

You can, of course, try to build it from the latest source. Note that nobody has touched the source code in two years, and the Gnome maintainer has dropped the project (which is why it was dropped from Debian and Ubuntu).

user535733
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