Is it possible to use empathy 2.32 on gnome 2.30?

Question

I'm running Ubuntu Lucid which contains the Gnome 2.30. The thing is that, I'm really interested on using empathy 2.32, since it fixes a lot of bugs. However I don't want to upgrade the entire system but I really want the new version of empathy :3. I tried using ppa or other methods but no luck. Any idea?

Answer 1

I just tried to build empathy from Maverick for Lucid, but it's not possible due to unmet build dependencies. The easiest other solution that I can think of is just to install the Maverick package using apt, and making use of pinning to keep the impact on your system to the minimum. This will require you to upgrade GTK+ and some other system components, but it's not so bad and works just fine for me. YMMV though, I'm not responsible if you break your system.

Here's how I just did it.

Open up /etc/apt/sources.list, and add Maverick sources at the bottom:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu maverick main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu maverick main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu maverick-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu maverick-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu maverick-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu maverick-security main restricted universe multiverse

(or use your preferred mirror). Don't do anything with apt yet. Next we'll open up the apt pinning file /etc/apt/preferences and tell apt not to install packages from Maverick (see man apt_preferences for more):

Package: *
Pin: release a=maverick
Pin-Priority: 1

Now run aptitude update to get the package indexes from these new sources you just added. Next call aptitude install empathy/maverick-updates to instruct aptitude to explicitly pull the package from Maverick instead of Lucid (the default). aptitude will tell you it wants to upgrade to a number of packages from Maverick:

Upgrade the following packages:
gconf2 [2.28.1-0ubuntu1 (lucid, now) -> 2.31.91-0ubuntu3.1 (maverick-updates)]
gnome-icon-theme [2.28.0-1ubuntu1 (lucid, now) -> 2.31.0-0ubuntu1 (maverick)]
libdbus-glib-1-2 [0.84-1 (lucid, now) -> 0.88-2 (maverick)]
libdbusmenu-glib1 [0.2.9-0ubuntu3.1 (lucid-updates, now) -> 0.3.16-0ubuntu1 (maverick)]
libgail18 [2.20.1-0ubuntu2 (lucid-updates, now) -> 2.22.0-0ubuntu1 (maverick)]
libglib2.0-0 [2.24.1-0ubuntu1 (lucid-updates, now) -> 2.26.0-0ubuntu1 (maverick)]
libgtk2.0-0 [2.20.1-0ubuntu2 (lucid-updates, now) -> 2.22.0-0ubuntu1 (maverick)]
libgtk2.0-bin [2.20.1-0ubuntu2 (lucid-updates, now) -> 2.22.0-0ubuntu1 (maverick)]
libnotify1 [0.4.5-1ubuntu4 (lucid-updates, now) -> 0.5.0-2ubuntu1 (maverick)]
librsvg2-2 [2.26.3-0ubuntu1 (lucid-updates, now) -> 2.32.0-0ubuntu1 (maverick)]
librsvg2-common [2.26.3-0ubuntu1 (lucid-updates, now) -> 2.32.0-0ubuntu1 (maverick)]
libsqlite3-0 [3.6.22-1 (lucid, now) -> 3.7.2-1 (maverick)]
libtelepathy-glib0 [0.10.1-1ubuntu2 (lucid, now) -> 0.12.0-0ubuntu1 (maverick)]
nautilus-sendto-empathy [2.30.3-0ubuntu1 (lucid-updates, now) -> 2.32.1-0ubuntu1 (maverick-updates)]

Agree to this if you don't think it's too bad (like I said, worked for me), and you'll end up with a newer Empathy.

Good luck!

Answer 2

you could go to [launchpad ][1]

[1]: https://launchpad.net/products/lucid-backports/+filebug and request that the app be backported to lucid

Answer 3

At the bottom of the package's page you can find the download links for the latest version (AMD64 or x86):

http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/amd64/empathy/download

http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/i386/empathy/download

The only other dependency you might have to meet is that of the empathy-common package.
Besides that, all other packages seems to need gnome versions >= 2.30.2, so you could give it a try.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/all/empathy-common/download

Answer 4

You can use the method mentioned by Iain, but just do it in a chroot.