Re: Installing Lilypond 2.23.10

[David Sumbler]

On Mon, 2022-07-18 at 11:15 +0200, Jean Abou Samra wrote:

Le 17/07/2022 à 17:03, David Sumbler a écrit :

Is it the intention that the next "stable" version of Lilypond will be 

packaged in this new way?  Will the shell script be done away with

there too?

Even if not, what are the perceived advantages of this change for the

development versions, at least?

Yes, all new versions of LilyPond will use this packaging. Getting

rid of the .sh script was not the only change; it was actually a

wholesale switch to a new compilation system, which is now 100×

simpler and more reliable, and now creates static binaries. Before,

a .sh installer was required, because once installed the binaries

couldn't be moved around. Now that they can, it is just unnecessary.

Not having a .sh installer has other advantages, too. It avoids

conflicts with distro packages. It makes the installation process

exactly the same across all OSes. It prevents people from shooting

themselves in the foot by not realizing that several versions of

LilyPond can be installed in parallel.

I should think that most users only use one version at a time, unless they have the understanding to help in testing development versions, in which case they would probably know that they can have several versions.

I think you are overcomplicating things by trying to mimic

the previous installation process with the new binaries.

Changing /usr/local/ is normally done by package managers

and dedicated tools, not by hand. If you don't know what

you're doing there, don't touch it. (This kind of advice applies

to any command using sudo, actually.)

I merely moved the new installation to the place where it would have been put by the script, had there been one.  I have successfully administered my own Linux boxes for the last 20 years or so without any major mishaps...

Instead, follow these simple steps. (I agree that _finding_ them

is not simple, but again it will eventually be in the learning

manual, with screenshots. That change has landed and will appear

in the next release.)

1. Download the archive.

2. Unpack it.

3. Move the lilypond-2.23.10 directory inside it in your

    home folder.

4. In your .emacs, change the path in (expand-file-name ...)

    to "~/lilypond-2.23.10/share/emacs/site-lisp".

And that's all.

Thanks for those clear instructions.  And having set up an alias, as suggested by David W., I found that typing 'lilypond' in a bash terminal produces the expected result.  However, this is not something I often do.

My usual work pattern is to edit .ly files etc. in emacs, and then to use the Lilypond-mode command C-c C-l or C-c C-f to produce a PDF or Postscript file.  Unfortunately I found that this now just produces an error message, such as:

lilypond /home/david/Cloud/LilyPond/test.ly

/bin/bash: line 1: lilypond: command not found

Compilation exited abnormally with code 127 at Tue Jul 19 16:07:42

I eventually realized that having the alias included in .bashrc was not working because this is only for interactive shells.  But I have tried putting it in .bash_profile, logging out and then logging in again, and this doesn't work either.

If somebody can suggest how I get emacs-mode Lilypond-command-lilypond and Lilypond-command-formatps to work, it will be very much appreciated, as always.

David